Posts by kmac499 930 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jul 2013
A current set of tele ads for a manufacturer and seller of wooden furniture....
Come on you know who they are, with a tag line of
"There's no Veneer in 'ere"
Must be a chat up line, as in some social circles it's best to avoid people with any sort of "Venneer" especially in the downstairs depts.
Well In a few years time we'll have the F35s with the type 45 destroyers. So as long as the Argies give us a phone call to say reboot your planes and ships now we're on our way, everything should be hunky dory. Good job MoD procurement.
(BTW the Type 45s have a nasty habit of tripping their main "fuseboxes" if you turn all their kit on at once.)
Yeah banks love audits, Never happier than when they found that 10p that fell down the back of the cash drawer in branch.
But when it comes to auditing code this usually means a tick box exercise. Did we have a spec (yes)
Did we do some testing (yes) Did we sit around risk assesing the changes (Yes). Ok go live
What I have neve seen is some form of single code vault akin to the banks money vault, where software is received, stamped, filed and held. This should be the one and only place that code can be retrieved from and put into production or formally signed out for future mods.
What I really really want out of a phone is the ability easily find people in my contacts list and call them. I don't want a pretend TV games console that can make a crappy call if there's enough battery life left.
What I really want from a watch is it to tell the time like my 20yo Seiko. I nearly bought a Pebble because I liked the idea of multiple faces but the bezels are still too big. Fitness app as 'firmware' no thankyou..
"You may think Apple are expensive, however once you factor in ease of use, lifespan, quality and resale value millions of others think its a trade-off worth making."
Hmmm
Yes they are relatively expensive but no more than a S7 Edge or the like.(which I wouldn't buy either.)
Ease of Use :- totally subjective and dictated by the size of the phone, what you use it for. and can it be customised to my tastes.
Lifespan :- As long as the fixed battery, and fixed memory allowance holds out.
Quality :- again subjective. I prefer rugged kit over designer corners.
Resale Value :- Yes probably better than any of my old phones, but I always keep the last one as an emergency backup anyway.
My personal trade off is to have my phone on a contract and every three\four years take the upgrade option to an older cheaper and possibly free handset.
Well argued;
I have had the pleasure of mentoring student programmers male and female. My approach needed to be tailored to the individuals ability and backstory.
At the time most of the young women didn't 'think' they had a practical skill or knowledge. Sorry to stereotype but when I discovered that some had needlework interests or musical abilities it didn't take long to convince them that the ability to follow patterns, sheet music and interpret them to achieve the end result was just as useful as some of the young mens experience spending weekends tinkereing with cars.
Proof positive that those who count other peoples money have no grip on reality.
My particular gripe is the way that projects are always described as 'over budget' never 'under funded'. Putting the blame on the people that spent years working on a project, rather than blaming the people who spent half a day in a meeting guessing the costs, then knocking 10% off that to get senior managers approval.
BTW if the anal-ysts are so good why aren't they running a google sized enterprise?
It's the mindset of the elected career politician . I was elected therefore I have the full authority of the entire nation to do whatever I think to be right. No matter what proportion of the electorate who voted for them the winner takes all mentality dominates.
Let alone the catastrophe of UC and the wreckage it will leave behind, IDS and people with similar mindset are now arguing for a Brexit. Which if the people vote for it. may well hand the reins of government to people like IDS boosting their confirmation bias through the ceiling.
Damn I was just about to go with that idea..but with a twist
Obtain a Patent for Crypto wIthout backdoors..
Sell patent to a Patent Troll ( Apple is a computer Co not a trolling Co (allegedly))
Get the patent troll to sue the arse of all cryptomakers that infringe; unless of course they have included a backdoor.avoiding the patent.
Simples
(Diane you can send me my fee via my Nigerian associates.)
I hear a lot about the much vaunted secure nature off BB kit and software. The desirabilty of maintainig the security of corporate info. Can anyone give me an example of a company that has suffered major loss or gone bust by theft of data via interception of communications.
I would be much more concerned about the theft of company data by employees, or data being trashed by the current crop of ransomware.
I often feel that the levels of secrecy exercised about most information inside companies is to maintain the heirarchies and charmed circles than to guard any genuinely unique secrets.
Well here's a couple of toilet tales that will fry Jane & Jonny Rednecks brains
1) I worked in Paris for an American company. The bathroom policy Unisex.. Not quite as awkward as it may sound as the bathroom was individual cubicles with floor to celing doors. Still a bit of a novelty finding a member of the opposite washing their hands tho'.
But plenty of public places had unisex brathrooms with much lower levels of privacy..
2) Whilst in a Tex\Mex restaurant bar in London The ladies often used the cubicles in the mens room as their facilities were under supplied.
3) Glastonbury many years ago; I'm still in therapy.
Looking Forward (or should that be down) to the IoT Crapper\ThunderBox\John.
Options include Sound, Vision, medical diagnosis of inputs and a nagging voice 'now wash your hands please; or else.'
It will make getting receipts for toilet visits easier though when visiting the Hitch Hikers womder planet Bethsalamin.
"...I can't transfer more than 50p without a red flag being raised somewhere in the name of anti-terrorism yet politicians manage to transfer millions?"
Too bloody right; Last year as Executor of my late parents estate I tried to pay out to family members including myself.
I tried mobile banking (specifically added to the account fot this purpose.)
Computer says NO; amount too large please try in branch.
So I went to the Branch to do EFT
"Sorry no can do" says the bank "£5k a day limit on EFT". But we can do CHAPS for a fee on each payment.
Is there any way I can pay this money out in one go without an extra fee.?
Yes said the bank you can write a cheque but it will take up to three days..
So all the latest technology fails but good ole paper which presumably triggered a BACS transfer is allowable. No passwords or 2 factor auth etc just an illegible scribble..
If I had any more parents left I think I'd go offshore just for the convenience...
Well there's a few things in here that raise questions.
My main one being how does the marketing budget of a bank compare to the training budget for it's IT staff. And I'm not talking about about Cisco, Oracle or whatever certification, but general training on software design and security. As branches are cut back and online\telephone banking becomes the first point of contact with your bank, the people who design and write the software become the invisible face of the bank
If all they are asked to do is keep the heap of legacy crap going then nothing will change.
Lacking in crystal balls I don't know if Tesla is the right route to green cars, but here's a tale.
I saw a guy at our local recycling dump taking bottles out of the 'bonnet' of a funny looking Jag, I realised it was a Tesla S so I wandered over for a nose and a chat. The owner was a really nice guy who loved his car, definirtely not a hippie.
He had a daily commute to London 70 miles each way so plenty of life in the 'tank' No congestion charge in London. It was a company car and the capital tax relief was great as was his personal tax charge. It cost a couple of quid a day to fill up, the ride and performance were brilliant and it's purchase price compared well to his alternative choices, which could have been a flash Porsche, a fully loaded XJ Jag or a novel AMG. and no he wasn't on commission.
"Yanis Varoufakis, who made a valiant effort to extricate Greece from imposed 'austerity' from Germany, are at least intelligent and qualified economists"
"Qualified Economist". That'll be the 'science' where the economics teachers are still spouting the same theories that prevailed before the last crash which they didn't see coming and can't explain. Hence the current uproar of some students who have realised that what they are being taught may be complete bollocks.
In similar breaking news Phlogiston to be reintroduced to the chemistry syllabus and the four humors to be taught in med school.
". A well-armed populace employs its government instead of fearing it."
So how many guns each do you need to stop fearing your Govt? They seem to be taking the piss no matter how many guns you have.
--------
A quick calculation 1 POTUS, 1 VP, 100 senators, 435 congress members, 9 supreme cout judges.
we'll call it 600 for luck
30 shells per clip in a reasonable sized glock magazine. So I reckon 5 guns would do it and we'll add an extra one in case one of the primaries jams.
Job Done
So if the rest of you can leave your guns by the door please...
As you seem to be obsessed with taking your guns everywhere.
Please can give you me a cogent argument as to why you should be allowed to take your weapons onto civil aircraft.
As you keep saying guns are for protection, so I'm sure you would have no objections to your fellow citizens packing on the 06:50am out of <insert name of Intnl airport here>.
I look forward to the day when any officer likely to undergo a disciplinary process is denied the option of taking 'early' retirement. We don't want to encourage lax behaviour do we?
Might as well payback all those PPI compensations as well. After all it was our own fault for not reading the small print in the 5 minutes when we were sold stuff.
Grey Beard reporting in (white actually but that's genetics for you)
Back in about '79 '80 I hired a Commodore PET from a supplier just to show it off to my boss and what it could do. Crackin' machine way ahead of it's time as an All in One box
Well I say hired I borrowed it from the dealer for a small fee\deposit , probably his beer money for the weekend.
I remember GEC had quite an enlightened set of career paths. It didn't insist on promoting capable scientists\engineers into management but gave them a path to remain in science\engineering.
They had a inventive set of job tiltle names parallel to the management grades. Which IIRC the highest grade, once you had proved yourself academically by pubishing papers producing patents etc,. was "'World Authority"
DWP Universal Credit system to be twinned with DEFRA Rural Payments system.
Two systems totally screwed by ministerial micro mismanagement.
I genuinely feel sorry for any IT worker with either of these on their CV. or any of the other vanity projects such as
the Passport\Asylum system
the Police IT and Comms ( Airwave)
the Emergency Service Control Rooms
the Courts Libra
the NHS anything
Etc etc...
Exactly the sort of repercussions that should be loudly raised in public.
The only real future business opportunity I can see is in helping a large number of the two million or so Brits in europe come back. A fair proportion of them are going to be disenfranchised in the referendum so they are going to make for a very interesting voting bloc in future UK elections
.
My house uses about 10-12kWh of leccy a day. Heating by Gas. If I was to go for a decent home charged e-car my power consumption would at least double. The UK is already struggling to keep the lights on.
I also have solar PV on the roof, it's averaging about 9kWh a day over the year so far, during daylight hours only of course.
Much as I look forward to an electric future, no matter how cheap we make storage systems, we are going to need a lot more generating capacity hopefully renewables and or safer nuclear (Thorium fuelled molten salt reactors seem a good civil technology option)
On the assumption that it's 'La HIlary' vs 'The Donald' I suggest that at some point in the presidential debates when Don has gone off on one bullying and insulting his opponent.
Hilary takes a short pause a shallow breath and says quite audibly "Screw you I'm here to debate for the presidency not debase it". and walks off.
"To put it another way, programming is 'blue collar' skilled trade - no different to plumbing"
I'm inclined to agree with you but that by no way diminishes tradesmen.
A basic knowledge of 'plumbing' is useful in order to understand how systems should be safely operated and maintained. similarly for CS classes.
Having watched a skilled plumber look into an empty airing cupboard and then, a day later there was a tank with many pipes around it; all neatly installed so as not to interfere with each other and space left for maintenance access to pumps filters etc.. No sign of a drawing sketch or pencilled marks on the walls.
Artisan skills are massively underrated in this country, we wrongly beleive thatsuch work is purely manual, not true. My plumber had to combine knowledge of installation regulations, (on which he was regularly assesed.), experience of materials and a hell of a lot of planning.
The sight of Apple Corp becoming a conscientious objector, to defend the human rights of their customers, grates a little with their past policies for their outsourced workforce and their rapacious pricing policies.
Presumably the next time Apple tries to defend one it's spurious patents by insisting that the defendent hands over any data on an encrypted device.
I hope the judge gives them short shrift.
The F1 engines on the Saturn were a bit special.
The fuel pump was driven by a tubine that was spun up by an enclosed rocket or gas generator. This turbine developed 55,000 horsepower. in order to pump 2.5 tons of lox and kerosene a second to a pressure just over 1,000psi.
Rocket Science easy it' s all about the F=ma
Rocket Engineering now that's clever..
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