Posts by Graham Bartlett

She might be a troubled warbler...

But the photos clearly proved she's not a bearded tit.

In other news, it's nice to see there's truth in advertising these days. TwitPic - never was an application more accurately named.

OK for me

Strange. I did my monthly accounts yesterday morning (both company and personal), and everything was working fine. If it's gone a bit wrong, I'm glad I did it when I did!

And David, if you think HSBC are bad, you really haven't seen anything until you've seen Barclays in action. I can't fault the Barclays branch staff - they're always great. But their outsourced Indian helpline staff are the biggest bunch of incompetent, unhelpful, uncaring and just plain stupid wastes of oxygen that I've ever had the misfortune to deal with. I've nothing against Indian helpline staff - Microsoft have their helpline in India, and I've always found them to be helpful. But I do object to the losers which Barclays have hired on the cheap from the Bangalore Special School for the Disastrously Inept. I wouldn't even recycle them as Soylent Green, because they clearly don't contain sufficient nutrients for proper development of brain cells.

Missed chance...

... for a subtitle about salty eruptions...

But...

... does this mean that wallabies are actually aliens in disguise? Are they trying to communicate with us? And how do the stoned wallabies get over to Glasto for crop-circling over there?

Oh, and when did all the cool new icons turn up?

Augmented reality - required reading

Anyone with even a passing interest in augmented-reality displays (and why they're not always a good idea) should read "Halting State" by Charles Stross. If you're interested in virtual worlds and you've not read "Snow Crash", people will rightly mock you. "Halting State" is equally essential reading for a view of what augmented-reality HUDs hooked up to mobile phones will do to the world.

Hell, never mind that. If you're even remotely interested in reading good fiction based on techy themes, you should be reading Charles Stross anyway, because he's one of the best futurist authors out there at the moment.

I don't know...

All those reports, I though it was simply impossible to get kids interested in science and engineering. Especially girls. That's why all those special awards for women involved in science and engineering had to be set up, because clearly the only way to get them involved is to have a "Britain's got female engineering talent" back-slapping contest.

Oh wait - actually, if they're interested in it, then they *will* do it. And be pretty damn good at it too.

@ Vincent and David

Not only did they have errors come from the guidance computer on landing, but the meaning of those errors wasn't actually documented anywhere. So the guys running the mission made the "command decision" that if the errors came less often than twice a minute, they'd carry on.

To summarise: The hardware engineers were so pushed for time that prototype hardware ended up becoming the production version. The software engineers wrote code with major bugs in it, and failed to write any relevant documentation. The end customer found one of those bugs at the worst possible time for everyone. And the managers made a random decision with no basis in engineering knowledge.

So it's nothing at all like engineering today. Oh wait...

And FWIW Vincent, you might want to compare oranges with oranges. Say, compare a car ABS system with the Apollo guidance software. Embedded software has a massive raft of experience in making sure "Error 1201" doesn't happen on your car's ABS (or defibrillator, or other safety-related kit). Trouble is that it's expensive, and you get what you pay for.

@ D@v3

Article does say tattooing.

And yeah, for 500k that sounds like a good deal. Leave 10k to one side for the removal operation when this company inevitably goes tits-up (sorry), and you're still way ahead of the game. And lest this sounds too much like whoring yourself out, remember that's her job description as an "adult movie star".

Engineering and fiction

Dave, check out Neal Stephenson's novel "The Diamond Age" for ideas on that score. In the book, engineering has gone nano-scale, with devices that look like ultra-small versions of old-school Victorian engineering - all pushrods and valves and stuff like that.

Incidentally, there are several things that the article avoids mentioning, hence the other reason for the "fiction" in the title. Yeah, this thing can hold its state for umpty-tum zillion years, and that's great. But it takes about 3s for a bit to change state (according to their data), which seriously limits its usefulness for any purpose except offline backups. They also don't mention anything about how many times it can change state over its lifespan, which is a *very* important issue for a mechanical system. And nor have they checked anything about this thing's stability when it's in an environment with electric fields created by other devices, which is a bit like saying "this amazing ice cube will last for a trillion years without melting" and leaving out the disclaimer of "... if I keep it stored in a freezer for a trillion years".

Wargames

Does this mean that the missile itself is smart enough to say "Hello, Professor Falken. Shall we play a game?" And work out midflight that what it's been programmed to do will result in a tie? Do you really want your nukes having moments of existential doubt halfway over the Atlantic?

Not a test case, but still symptomatic of HBOS

Whilst the bloke in this case does seem to be a numpty, HBOS's reaction does seem to be typical.

About 10 years back, my sister had a student account with the Halifax Building Society (as it then was). Like all students, she got her interest-free overdraft. Great. And like a number of students, she exceeded this occasionally and was charged accordingly. Also OK.

But then she got a job after uni, and wanted to close her account. The conversation (over several months, multiple bank managers and various departments of Halifax) went something like:-

"I'd like to clear my student overdraft and close my student account, please."

"That'll be (overdraft+several hundred quid) please."

"Eh? Here's my latest statement saying how much my overdraft is, and here's the letters listing all the charges I owe you."

"No, pay us what we're asking."

"Where did the extra come from?"

"We don't know, and we're not going to tell you, so just pay us all this money or we'll blacklist your credit rating."

"OK, here's the money I know I owe you. Here's a letter saying I won't pay the rest until you tell me where those charges came from."

"Here's a credit rating blacklist. Have a nice life."

Had my sister been some future-free dosser, then maybe they wouldn't have wanted her as a future customer. But since she was a newly-trained corporate lawyer, and at the time was going out with a high-earning City trader, this is probably not the cleverest move for their future business. As far as our family is concerned, the Halifax can forget about ever seeing us as customers.

Bonsai monkey!

From that pic, it looks like NASA invented the Bonsai Monkey. Move over, Bonsai Kitten, you're 50 years too late!

Paris, because she knows all about monkey business...

"Lying or ill-informed..."

How unlike the BNP we know and, er, despise, to be lying and/or ill-informed. Surely that's never happened before? Oh wait, there was this thing called the Holocaust which they think didn't happen...

Oh, and for the benefit of the AC above - yes, I *do* register my displeasure with anyone I meet who says they're voting BNP. I make sure they're informed that the BNP are neo-Nazi scum (yes, those are the words I use). Been there, done that.

@Stu

Minor notes from a stiffie pilot. (For non-pilots, hang-gliders and paragliders are often referred to as "stiffies" and "floppies" respectively, because a hang-glider is inherently rigid whatever happens, whereas a paraglider can - and will - deflate and turn into an expensive bag of washing if it doesn't like the wind/pilot/tone of voice.)

Foot-launched paramotors (paraglider plus motor) and powered hang-gliders in the UK are currently occupying a grey area where no training is legally required. But you'd be a bit of a twit to try flying one without proper training, and likely a dead twit too. That said though, Stu is right that they're the cheapest way to get airborne, both in terms of cost to buy and in terms of training to fly safely.

Downside is that they *must* be foot-launched. The moment you use wheels for take-off and landing, you're officially a microlight and all the rules for those now apply to you. You're also limited on weight and the amount of fuel you can carry.

And your airspeed isn't that great. For combat purposes, a powered paraglider is essentially a stationary target - and a large target at that. A powered hang-glider is faster and more manoeverable, so might be better at zooming into the dropzone at low altitude. That said, it's still not incredibly speedy unless there's a good following wind. Oh yes, and the ones powered by petrol engines are *seriously* noisy - there are a few people experimenting with electric ones, but everyone knows that current battery technology sucks, so you won't get very far with those.

The penguin, because even those could fly if you strapped a large enough engine to them...

IR35 and how not to encourage people to work for themselves

My main problem with IR35 is that it's taxing people just because their contributions don't involve bricks and mortar. If you're a brickie with a ltd company, suppose you go out and build a wall for Barratt Homes. It's still using *your* skills as a trained and experienced workman, but because the result of your work is a physical thing, somehow IR35 doesn't apply to your skills. Or suppose you're running a shop on your own - again, IR35 isn't interested in you. But if you're a software engineer, suddenly you're a cheating scumbag because you're using your hard-earned skills the same way.

Now suppose I'm hiring out my skills successfully enough that I need to get a mate in to help. Suddenly I'm no longer caught by IR35, because we're both hiring out our skills instead of just one of us. Why's that?

And as Jeremy says, although contractors get more when they're working, there's a flipside that you're more likely to be out of work. How many permies spent 4 months from the start of the credit crunch without a job? Because I did, and as a contractor I wasn't bitching about it because I knew it could happen and I'd made preparations. I claimed nothing from DSS because I didn't see it was necessary.

As nice as it would be, the phenomenon of the "permanent contractor" is sadly a rare beast these days. What actually happens is that companies keep a small pool of contractors on regularly-renewed contracts during the good times, and this *looks* like the old "permanent contractor" thing. But in fact they're the cannon fodder for when work dries up, because unlike permies who need to go through the whole redundancy thing, if you lose a project and find you're overstaffed, you can just tell the contractors "don't come in on Monday" and that's it. Like I said, you make what you can in the good times because you know there *will* be bad times.

Oh, and hands up any permies who need to spend a grand a year on an accountant, £600 on company insurance (professional indemnity and company possessions like laptops), and need to spend a day a month of their free time doing invoices and stuff? Didn't think so.

@Explosiveness

People commenting about lighting cigarettes around batteries might care to remember the standard Haynes manual guidance about lead-acid batteries, specifically the part about hydrogen gas being given off when the battery is charging. You don't see too many accident reports due to mechanics smoking cigarettes around the car battery, most likely because (a) there isn't much gas released, (b) you'd need to actually drop the cigarette into the battery for it to have much of a chance of doing anything, and (c) it's clear to most people that smoking in an garage environment that contains petrol, oily rags and other flammable substances is not a move that ensures a long and happy career.

But...

/... it was Maverick (the pilot) who shouldn't have left his wingman, not Goose.

Thanks, mine's the flying jacket with the tasteless 1980s-style patches.

Free is nice but stupid. Why not pay?

Another clue-free move from the majors. What do people really want for download? Answer: songs on all the CDs they can buy from Amazon, and all from the old CDs now delisted, available at decent bitrates (256 or above). And this at a price which reasonably reflects the costs involved.

Does iTunes do this? Nope. More than 20p a song, and I'm not doing it. Especially for older stuff like Quo, Deep Purple or Queen, I might as well buy a bargain-bin CD for £5 (or less) and get the physical version a whole lot cheaper, as well as with better sound quality (and rippable to whatever rate you want). And as the article says, the main users of Spotify are people looking up all their old favourites.

The majors have had 10 years since Napster to get a clue on digital distribution and actually *sell* us what they're sitting on and hoarding. All Spotify tells us is that after all this time, there still isn't anyone with any clout in the music industry who's figured it out - they're just lurching from one broken business model to another.

10 years after a work colleague looked at it...

At this point I'd like to give a big shout out to Charlie Wartnaby, a former work colleague, who 10 years ago was playing around with a shoe-mounted 3-axis accelerometer to measure his running speed. Even at the time, this wasn't a new idea - Charlie found that someone already had a patent on it.

Oh, and re the article, the final few paragraphs seem a bit odd. Boot location sensors would certainly help the Americans not to kill any of their own soldiers or any of their allies' soldiers (a useful feature given their track record), but it's not much use for stopping the aforesaid Hellfire missile wiping out a houseful of sandal-wearing women and their barefoot kiddies.

@Evil Graham

The Col Sanders of film? I beg to differ. I've had food from KFC which didn't make me feel like throwing up on the spot. I've not found a Dan Brown book which managed it.

Stallman Schmallman

Stallman's ideology is all very well, so long as someone is bankrolling you. It's essential to remember that Stallman has never had to work in a "real" job with deadlines, customers and products to ship. He's gone directly from university ivory tower, to isolated lab ivory tower, to LUG-supported ivory tower. There's a reason that the GNU Hurd never appeared, which is that the ivory-tower types spent all their time playing around the edges and never actually produced anything that worked.

Oh, and to the people above who say that open-source software wouldn't exist without Stallman - wrong. Just wrong. Since forever, coders have written stuff for their own purposes, and shared it with others. Sure, the GPL wouldn't exist - but most (if not all) of the code released under the GPL would. It just wouldn't come with a pretty semi-legal license.txt file.

"Chris Moyles continues to be popular"

The question we'd all like answered is - "Why, dear god, why?!?!"

As the saying goes...

As the saying goes, "Learn from other people's mistakes - there isn't enough time to make them all yourself."

And thinking outside the obvious immediate symptom is always a good plan. Over the last 10 years, I've spent a lot of time helping out electronics hobbyists on various forums. One of the most common questions is "how do I stop my circuit from resetting (or doing something else strange) when I turn on a motor (or relay, or other power device)?" Some people start into metal boxes to shield from EM interference and other weird-and-wonderful magic. But people who've been answering this question on a regular basis for years will tell you that actually the most common cause is that the power device is pulling down the power supply, so the circuit is resetting because it's got no juice to run on! They might have checked the supply with a voltmeter, but the supply dropout will typically only be for a few milliseconds so they'll never spot it with anything less than an oscilloscope.

Hence the point of questioning your assumptions. In this example, it's the circuit which exhibits the problem, and checks on upstream stuff seem to show them working OK. In fact the checks on the upstream stuff haven't been as comprehensive as they'd thought.

Fault-finding on cars can follow a similar pattern. The tendency is to replace parts in order of cost and/or difficulty-to-reach until you find the cause. The complication which people often forget is that the new part you just bought could also be knackered.

Can't believe it's not been said yet...

Would this make it a Dog-5 cable?

Oh, and @AC talking about "cat5 lead for sale. Dog not included", I was looking on eBay for a flight-case yesterday and found an ad saying "2U flightcase. Kitten not included." (Yes, the picture of the flightcase has caught the owner's kitten walking past just as they took the photo.)

@Chris Emerson

Ah of course. I was under the mistaken impression that most small private planes took off from small local airfields (usually grass fields with a small hangar at one end) where operating expenses are within reach of the average person, but now I remember that you can only take off and land at Heathrow or Gatwick.

Bottom line, if you're close enough to an airliner for it to matter, you're in airspace. At that point, either you've previously arranged with ATC that you're OK to be there, or you're in a world of hurt when you land because your plane's number is printed in big black letters along the fuselage and wings, and some big uniformed men without much sense of humour will be round your house in very short order. Airspace mostly only applies on the takeoff and landing paths for airports (and round the airport itself), and outside those it's assumed that everyone takes their chances and watches out for other aircraft. By that point your average airliner is indeed at 35,000 feet.

And that US license isn't exactly an "unprecedented low". Try hang-gliding. You can get powered harnesses for a hang-glider which basically turn them into an ultralight, and training is legally optional (although you'd have to be blindingly stupid not to get proper training, given that your body forms the control system, undercarriage and crumple zone, so if things go badly wrong it can hurt a lot). And even weightshift microlights need a whole lot less training than a PPL to fly a "proper" plane.

@Dense execs

To quote a very relevant Scott Adams cartoon:

"The Pointy-Haired Boss has become so dense he has collapsed into a black hole. Sadly his thoughts can still escape because they lack substance."