Qualification to hold public office
As others have said: 'The desire to hold public office, when coming from already privileged classes, should preclude those from holding it'.
Posts by Measurer
166 posts • joined 27 Jan 2012
Trump 'not normal' FCC commish reveals amid Sinclair-Tribune mega-media-merger meltdown
'Prodigy' chip moonshot gets hand from Arm CPU guru Prof Steve Furber
Astroboffins spot a fat 'monster' ALIEN planet terrorizing tiny dwarf
Forget trigonometry, 'cos Babylonians did it better 3,700 years ago – by counting in base 60!
British snoops at GCHQ knew FBI was going to arrest Marcus Hutchins
Crazy bug of the week: Gnome Files' .MSI parser runs evil VBScripts
Fancy buying our aircraft carrier satnav, Raytheon asks UK
Far out: Dark matter bridges millions of light-years long spotted between galaxies
US visitors must hand over Twitter, Facebook handles by law – newbie Rep starts ball rolling
USMC: We want more F-35s per year than you Limeys will get in half a decade
Linus Torvalds releases 'biggest ever' Linux 4.9, then saves Christmas
Low-power transistors hint at alternative to battery bonfires
Pair programming – you'll never guess what happens next!
Microsoft boffins: Who needs Intel CPUs when you've got FPGAs?
Tuesday 18th October 2016 07:28 GMT
Re: Who Needs Programmers When You Need Hardware Designers?
Totally agree. Running machine control hardware, but with a flashy GUI and machine vision etc. usually requires a P.C AND a motion controller / PLC (maybe with FPGA in) to deal with the hard real time processing (100uS servo loop processing etc.). But even when shown the hardware, most softies cannot grasp the concept that code is being executed asynchronously and in parallel on both the P.C and the PLC, sometimes using the same inputs. Quite often there is a choice on where to run a given algorithm, and quite often the wrong decision is made because there is no appreciation of the 'best' or 'fastest' hardware to execute the algorithm you are trying to code. Much more needs to be done in these days of OpenCL and even 'just' multi cored processors to educate, it's a massive untapped resource.
The next Bond – Basildon or Bass-Ass? YOU decide
IBM lifts lid, unleashes Linux-based x86 killer on unsuspecting world
Linus Torvalds won't apply 'sh*t-for-brains stupid patch'
Wednesday 7th September 2016 09:46 GMT
Re: Firmware - Driver relation
People need to look up the form, fit, function rule which is considered best practice for all engineering change control. If one part of an assembly breaks its internal interfaces (i.e. between two software blobs, two mechanical parts, an electrical plug pinout), then that part needs to be given a new 'part' number, not just up-revised. As the mating part will have to fundamentally change too (the electrical socket needs to mate with the new plug pinout), and will not be backwards compatible, then that will need a new part number as well. The parent assembly (firmware + driver) will definitely need to be up-revised as its child parts have changed, but may need a new 'part' number if, due to the internal changes of the 'parts', its interface to the outside world changes. In this case, it makes absolute sense to always supply firmware and driver as a controlled 'assembly' of parts rather than independent parts.
Intel fabs to churn out 10nm ARM chips for LG smartphones next year
Google's brand new OS could replace Android
'Alien megastructure' Tabby's Star: Light is definitely dimming
Graphene is actually self-folding origami, proclaim physicists
Space station to get shiny new ringpiece for automatic penetration
Bacon is not my vodka friend
UK digi strategy on ice post Brexit results - sources
Monday 27th June 2016 09:32 GMT
No big deal..
Manufacturing standards are aligning throughout the World these days, and those countries, geographic areas etc. who don't have their own usually specify either EU or American (UL) standards. See UL 61010-1 as an example of the yanks adopting BS EN IEC 61010-1 (measurement and process control electrical safety) so that it becomes a truly harmonised worldwide standard.
Government regulation will clip coders' wings, says Bruce Schneier
Monday 13th June 2016 09:50 GMT
There are standards out there....
As I've said before on El Reg, European Standards such as EN 62061, 61508 etc. do attempt to formalize the requirements for safety critical software, but there has to be a realization within the software industry in general that what they code (whether that be IoT based remote control stuff or not) may have a real world hazardous effect, and therefore these standards have to be applied. I have worked in the industrial control industry for over 20 years and it really scares me that layers of abstraction between P.C side code (GUI, Vision processing etc.), and the lower level real time systems for controlling motion or I/O, keep the average coder completely ignorant of how a given system works. Yes, abstraction, libraries etc. etc. are vital, but the coder MUST understand at least in some detail, how a control stack works, when the end result of moving a slider GUI element could result in a toaster going into meltdown, be that toaster in the kitchen local to you, or on the other side of the world.
King Tut's iron dagger of extraterrestrial origin
What to call a £200m 15,000-tonne polar vessel – how about Boaty McBoatface?
Bruce Schneier: We're sleepwalking towards digital disaster and are too dumb to stop
Boffins celebrate 30th anniversary of first deep examination of Uranus
Samsung Gear VR is good. So good 2016 could be year virtual reality finally makes it
In-a-spin Home Sec: 'We won't be rifling through people's web history'
Nippy, palaver and cockwomble: Greatest words in English?
Monday 19th October 2015 10:06 GMT
It's not very nice, but
I can't claim credit for this one, that honour lies with a certain landlord of westcountry pubs I know (and rugby player), but I cannot but bow to the incredible talent which invented...
'GUNT'
To describe those ladies, who for whatever reason, have blurred the physical boundary between their tummies and what lies beneath, into one amorphous blob.
The brevity and yet extreme adjectivity(?) of this four letter word has left many a seasoned drinker, rugby player, bon viveur etc. stunned by its elegance. Hats off to you Mr G.
Was gonna call my band 'bollard' years ago. Nice word.
