Posts by kmac499

Call the AA

On more than one occasion a nice AA patrolman has plugged his rufty tufty laptop inrto my car and figured out what was wrong with it.

Maybe we could get a Homestart sunscription for the F35s

Signing up to a regulator and Arbritation before going to court seems fine to me,

Most other serious occupations have some form of self regulating body with the ability to expel offending members.

Maybe Impress ain't the right regulator but IPSO certainly isn't. The fact that the nationals fought tooth and nail against equal prominence for a correction or apology i.e Front page banner headlines tells me everything I need to know about their commitment to the truth.

Maybe the smaller publishers could look at forming their own regulator??

I treasure a free press but more importantly I treasure a press that reports on News not pictures of some idiot who believes themselves to be a 'celeb' falling out of a limo at 3 in the morning.

Personally I would love to see the Editors of some of our natinal organs in the media themselves a lot more. I wonder how Daily mail readers would react to the reported behaviour of Paul Dacre. (would make Donald Trump look like a pussycat)

Alexa or Lintilla clones

Until the purveyors of these cloned personal voice activated assistants allow me to set the name of my device. I ain't buying one,

Now here's a thought if we had multiple wake words we could configure the box to support multiple personalities for the multiple people in the house?

Petard by hoisted (please re-arrange)

Please tell me they got McKinsey in to advise them how to rightsize to the new opportunity..

5 inch is more than big enough for me thank you, (for a phone anyway) Anything larger than a handful is just waste to paraphrase the old wisdom..

The HMRC in the UK has some fairly sophisticated software that can delve into POS and accountancy databases to verify the 'honesty' of the raw data let alone any audit trails.

We never 'tidied up' our customers databases if for whatever reason we had duff transactions in there. It's far better to say to a VAT man "it screwed up, we don't know why but there is the wreckage", rather than trying to explain away deleted records, which just raises the level of suspicion and examination..

Arguing with creationists reminds of the wise advice given to me about trying to teach pigs to sing.

1) It's a waste of time

2) It annoys the pig

3) Should you ever succeed; pigs have lousy singing voices anyway.

(no character smilarities drawn between pigs and creationists expect stubborn stupidity)

Meanwhile I'm off to prepare for a winter festival where a virgin girl gives birth, a fat bloke in a red suit visits every home in a flying sleigh in one night, and peace and goodwill cover the earth..

Congratulations

We need more public recognition of such success and leadership to prove to aspiring female coders and software engineers it's well worth it.

Lower Tech alternative

Who needs a Bidet once you've mastered handstands in the shower. (Don't forget the noseclip)

Letter to NASA

Dear NASA

We hear you're having a little budget trouble with your new firework. Sorry to hear that but we might have an interesting Plan 'B' option for you at a bargain knock down price.

We've had a call from some Boffins in a shed on an industrial estate in Oxfordshire somewhere. They claim to have a nifty new idea of a jet engine that converts into a rocket engine, a bit like one of yoiur Tarnsformer film story things I suppose.

It seems they've had some Euro-Boffins pass a slide rule (sorry calculator) over it and it looks like they might be onto something.

Anyway our boffins are a bit strapped for cash and as you know so are we, so we thought maybe you could have a chat with Mr Donald and see if we can shore up the old special relationship with a cheque. If need be we could possibly throw in a hono(u)rary knighthood or something for him.

We would of course like to keep a litlle Union jack on the tail of the damned thing, but you're welcome to keep any commercial proceeds if it works,

Love and Kisses

HMG

(Oh BTW the thing is called Skylon)

Heretic Alert.

Heresy Staement 101

"Most Business systems are the same, they capture some data, hold it, process it a bit and spit out a report."

Yes they differ in scale with the amount and volume of data, the speed of processing of the data; but these scaling techniques should over time become a commodity off the shelf solution. Just as no one today would seriously re-create a networking protocol or a DBMS. Plenty of templates exist for the capturing and auditing of data either via terminals or web-pages.

The only real difference between systems is the "process it a bit" stage whetner we are processing Vehicles and People at the DVLA, Accounts and Money in Banks. Customers and Orders at Amazon or any other system you can think of; once the software application shell is in place, The addition of the data processing has always been succesfully implemented by very small teams working closely with the customer, sadly the marketeers got hold of it, named it agile, and are creaming in the money on seminars etc.

Non Business systems, specifically safety critical ones, may well follow a different set of rules. Any volunteers to fly in the first AirBus with an agile only developed flight control system?

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Please just give me few moments to done the asbestos suit before you hit reply

Apple n' Scientology

In the beginning was a guy who made his own harmless DayJob was moderately good at what he did (in his field) making a few dollars.

He quite grew to like having a few dollars so he did it again and realised that the 'world' he had created appealed to quite a few people.

He then got 'marketing' a terrible disease which allows you to take a basically harmless idea and spin it into a belief system. This can become so strong it can take over the lives of the people who follow it, making them hand over all their money for the latest edition\revelations.

Then the original guy died, leaving a gaping hole in the lives of his fellow travellers and a wish in them to continue his legacy a they see it.

Sadly the flow of money becomes a self reinforcing meme which corrupts the custodians of the basic idea convincing them that they must be the only true path because otherwise why would they be so succesfull.

Eventually pursuit of the belief blinds the custodians, until some smart arse kid at the back shouts "Hey look he's got no clothes on" Then it can all go to shit very quickly.

BTW I'm most definitely not saying Apple is an evil cult.. it's just marketing

Why I won't buy a nest for my Nest

One word anwser Revolv..

If I can't host the smart hub of my IoT system I ain't interested. Why invest all the cash time and plain old PITA effort to install a system the supplier can kill at a moments notice. No matter how smart it is.

Rules of Code Club

Requirements will change, definitely before you've finshed, usually before you've begun.

Requirements will change, did I mention that? hardcode nothing.

Elegance maybe satisfying, Payday is better; know when to stop twiddling.

The one who will support your code in five years time is a homicidal maniac who knows where you live.

Good code is like good driving; defensive; everyone else is out to get you so deal with it.

Copy and Paste is the Enemy of the people, don't do it, that's what functions were invented for.

Software is never finished, it is always a work in progress.

Software is never released, it escapes.

LIve by these rules or forever be condemned to rewrite management reports ad nauseum..

Every time I took over some code, i.e. I had 100% ownership of it. It goes straight through my code formatter.

Why? Because once the code is shaped with indentation, trailing and leading blank lines and simple function headers you can skim the code and 'feel' it's general shape.

Golden Handcuffs ??

Maybe if HMG used some of the pivate sector golden handcuffs concepts of terminal bonus for success, no competition clauses to avoid anyone jumping ship to other companies competing in the same space; or some way of stopping gamekeepers becoming poachers.

All of this being made 100% crystal clear at the interview.. OK it migh cost us more but at least we would have people who are prepared to stay the course.

Monopoly Money rules

Pay up so you Don't Go To Jail !!

Jeez; it may be legit under Itallian law, but it ain't much of an incentive to a global corporate honcho to play by the rules is it. I wonder how much interest they 'earned' for their company by noty paying the Tax.?? Comfortably more than 65k I'll bet.

A10 the Meccano airplane

Brfiliant piece of kit for 'assymetric' battles. I think it was even designed so that you could take bits of the left side of an aircraft and stick em back on the right side, The idea being that an A-10 will alwasy get you home but the remains can be cannibalised to patch up it's siblings and go back out again.

On a more serious point imagine how effective a few of these would have been enforcing a no fly policy against Assads barrel bombing helicopters, before the Russians turned up..

It'll be all nice and chummy until you decide to leave.. Two options

1) Over an hour on the phone with 'customer service' demanding to know why you want to leave.

2) Cancel the DD and send a registered letter

A better example

I would say that FIAT did a better job with their re-imagining of the 500 brand. Great city car dimensions, Quirky small engines, four adults can fit in one. and fun to drive. Mind you I'd love to have a play with an Abarth ediition one

Bungled? A tad harsh methinks

Come on guys show a little solidarity with your fellow rocket scientists\engineers..

Martian planetary defences do seem to be very efffective, Maybe once Brexit has gone through we could send Michael Gove on a trade mission to bring their tech back to defend the earth. Mind you sending Gove might improve this planet a bit anyway