Posts by CorwinX 165 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Jan 2023
... of a National Insurance number?
AFAIK in this country that stays immutable even if you legally change your name.
I know they don't actually have NI but there should be a unique "citizen number" (primary key in database terms), assigned at birth, for this very reason.
It's why many (most?) gov depts will ask for this first and then ask you to confirm your name and address.
These only work if you've got people who know what they're doing tech-wise and can make sure the original specification and contract for the system are rock-solid. No get-out clauses.
But if that's done properly then failing to deliver lets you put the boot in.
Also phased payments, based on milestones.
Initial development, acceptance testing, initial pilot, retooling, extended pilot, final acceptance, rollout, support.
I learnt that on day one of a project management course at the bank I worked for.
The problem, I think, is these contracts are always negotiated with civil servants - not IT professionals.
IMHO
The Appolo missions got to the moon with someting akin to a pocket calculator.
The shuttles flew with vastly less tech than your average mobile phone.
If you're going to strap someone on top of a rocket the most important thing is the KISS principle.
Don't make it clever - make it work simply and safely as best you can.
There's also an XXY variant. Doesn't usually cause physical issues but indivduals can have issues with, emotionally and sexually, figuring whether to behave male or female.
And there's an XYY variant I think which tends toward aggressive behaviour.
But whatever the mix we're all human - tolerance is the key.
... it's getting back.
Both the National Geographic scientific series "Mars" (highly recommended) and to a lesser extent "The Martain" have quite serious points to make.
Getting the lunar landers back into orbit was relatively trivial. But Mars has gravity.
So you need an air-dropped, ready-to-go habitat. With a lot of oxygen and preferably kit to suck supplementary oxygen out of what little atmosphere there is.
That would probably be a hydroponics rig to grow food as well as the plants generating oxygen.
And you need a an escape craft to get back into orbit to catch a ride home!
You're not going to get too many volunteers for a one-way trip.
So we hear a lot from Musk, Bezos & Co about getting a spacecraft to Mars. Not so much on the logistics of keeping people alive for at least a few weeks and getting them back alive.
Back in the mists if time, "computing" was taught as an "Advanced Mathematics" course.
And punch cards and tape did indeed feature.
I was literally taught how to "patch" punch tape by cutting out a bit of the tape and inserting a new bit.
You do all know where the phrases "Cut & Paste" and "Patching" come from?
The snakes aren't too bad but have you seen the bloody spiders.
A roo can knock you out with a punch and their legs will send you back 20ft.
And have you seen the claws on a koala. It's good they get monged out on eucalyptus or they could have your face off.
Then there's the Drop Bears. Especially the Yellow-Bellied ones. Run for cover.
Any Ozzie here will get that joke.
The file structure came about because of the real-world analog of Filing Cabinet (drive), Folder and Document within said folder.
It's a concept a 5-year-old can grasp.
My music collection is filed Artist/Group > Album Name (year) > 0x Song Title
My book collection is filed as Author > Series Name (1-x -- y expected Month 200x) > Series Name 0x - Title - Author
Talking over 6000 files here!
I'd love to hear your opinion on a more sane approach.
Structured is fine, but there needs to be an exit strategy...
Along the lines of ON ERROR GOTO x (whatever language).
x being an a hard coded destination that does analysis, clean up, notification and restart.
Otherwise you can end up in an infinite loop.
Meccano and (showing my age) Denshi Blocks - still available but flashier than back then. Printed book giving instructions how to build circuits out of plug in blocks containing basic components - resistors, capacitors, transistors, diodes, etc. My kit could be used to build a working AM radio.
There's another angle.
They may want to look at simple consumer law.
Fairly sure UK and US law are somewhat the same.
Key phrase is "fit for purpose".
You sell a spade to someone they expect to be able to dig holes with it.
You sell an operating system to someone they have a reasonable expectation that it will run their apps without crapping itself.
Selling a product that doesn't "do what it says on the tin" is fraud-adjacent.
Just saying.
... with you for reminding me that I'm an old git ;-)
I was in Liverpool when it was the world centre of home computing. Worked part time at Fuller Micro. Gold stars for anyone who gets that ref.
Amused myself a fair bit of the time cracking the various anti-piracy schemes they tried on the game tapes (not for money, just for fun).
Simpler times.
... Windows for Workgroups was an upgrade floppy to Win 3.11 because they weren't quite sure if TCP/IP was going replace NetBUI and were fairly clueless about this thing called "The Internet"?
Figure that probably started out as a side-project some techies were tinkering with the network stack.
Bits of kit you could stick between a PC and a printer, modem, scanner etc.
LEDs to show you what lines were going high or low and jumpers to swap the connections around.
Once the kit chattered into life you knew how the permanent cable needed to be wired.
Or you could see the PC was sending data but the printer wasn't responding and needed some percussive maintenance.
Them were the days.
That brings memories back. Landing in Bali, 20yrs ago, travelling on a shoestring (working mind you, words were spoken in the accounts dept when I got back).
They were known as cattle trucks. Waiting outside the train/coach station. Open back, pack as many punters in as was halfway legal and ferry them into town.
Did this exact thing a few years ago.
Senior exec kept everything on a USB 3.5"external drive - no backup, obviously, because.
Sudden problem - drive not recognized.
Plugged it in, ear to drive - click, click click. Drive head stuck in "park".
Made a big production of holding it *precisely* 6" above the desk (measured with a ruler for best effect) and slammed it down.
Drive kicked into life. Copied everything back onto his PC and then threw it in the bin.
Later heard that the reason they guy was sweating like a bison was the drive held a draft financial report he'd been working on for days.
User education ensued.
... on any device except the occasional intranet site that mandated it.
Went from Mosaic -> Netscape -> Firefox.
Not a single problem with it on my current phone, raft of extensions installed, incl uBlock, just works.
Plus it syncs bookmarks with my PC.
No interest in Chrome whatsoever.
Actually, you *can* get it from a Google search.
Expert Witness 101...
Duty is to aid the Court in understanding the situation - not to whoever is paying/employing you.
Independant - how anyone ever thought a Fujitsu employee passed that test boggles the mind.
Duty to bring to the Court's attention anything that might undermine your conclusions (differing opinions, lack of evidence, etc).
Methodology - what steps you took to inform your opinion.
Ongoing duty of disclosure if something crops up to change your opinion, even if the case is over.
Statement should include your qualifications to be having an opinion on the matter along with other legal niceities.
Few other bits and pieces but that's the crux of it and you don't actually need legal training to understand it.
There's no doubt he's an expert with a small "e" but it seems he was mostly involved in linking Horizon into the back-end financial systems - which is not where the problems were.
The problems were with the front-end EPOSS (in both Legacy Horizon and Online) and he doesn't seem to have had much to do with that end of the system.
It's notable that the lawyers kept trying to get him to "beef up" his testimony and to his small amount of credit he obviously pushed back sometimes.
Most of the blame for the Horizon fiasco goes to the Legal, Security and Investigation depts - including standing him up as an independent Expert in the first place.
As with all big systems it's not about if it's got bugs - it does. It's how you (mis)handle them cropping up.
A Conflict of Interest doesn't suggest someone will actually be affected by that conflict and tailor their evidence.
It means there is the possibilty of that happening, even unwittingly.
There's also the *appearance* of bias even if there is none. Justice must be *seen* to be done, etc.
It's bad enough the lawyers thought it was a good idea to stand him up - what the heck were the judges in the cases thinking?
... computer expert. "It's just not the right structure … it indicates to me that they don't understand what those particular structures are,"
This was the infamous doubling bug - some worthless widget didn't know how to use multiplying by -1 to change a positive variable to a negative.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
