Posts by TeeCee 9435 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Oct 2007
We are where we are 'cos the NHS builds bespoke for just about everything. There is a reason for this and it's a bloody silly one.
There is plenty of good medical software for all aspects of running large healthcare organisations available off-the-shelf. The trouble is that all these ask one simple question up front, globally universal to healthcare[1], whenever adding/updating a patient or their care. How are they paying?
Try to deploy anything like that in the NHS and the unions scream blue murder about "creeping privatisation". Bunch of bloody spanners that they are....
[1] And if the NHS actually asked it, like everyone else, "health tourism" wouldn't even exist. (Heavy hint for the terminally thick: The patient's NHS number goes in this field.)
Yeah, let's solve a simple problem by being an incredibly fucking stupid bunch of rabid Stalinists.
Back compatibility?
Upgrade costs?
Migration?
Guess what? Your saying "we need to force everyone to do xyz whether they want it or not" makes you no better than ${government} saying "we need to force everyone to do xyz whether they want it or not"....
DNT was effectively dead as soon as it the W3C[1] ruled that offering for confirmation a default to the user of "On" (Microsoft) was not allowed and browsers doing so could have their setting ignored. Hiding the option (defaulted to "Off") in the depths of the browser config while not actually telling anyone about it is the "right" approach apparently (Mozilla, Google, etc ad-funded nauseum).
[1] The finest standards money can buy.
I can't help thinking that Linus' response to a blackmail threat would be something like; "Fuck off, shithead", making him a less than ideal target.
Also, if there are any feminists thinking of adopting these tactics, they'd do well to look up the meaning of the phrase "Two-faced cow" first....
As I am not a bloody clairvoyant I think we can safely assume it isn't and we knew this already....
It patents net slow development of technologies (they do),
Any development of technology tends to require significant investment. That won't happen without ROI, which means some method of ensuring that the original developers are compensated for that technology's use is a prerequisite for said development to take place at all.
As not all technologies developed prove of worth, ROI has to exceed investment by a considerable amount to keep investors chucking the cash on the off-chance of hitting a winner.
As most people[1] are freeloading thieves at heart, some legal mechanism is required to force the buggers to compensate the developers.
"Stopped" is slower than "slow", so they don't. QED.
[1] and all corporate entities....
Yes it is.
Unfortunately Porsche have now achieved the sort of sales levels where most of them are bought by people who want a car that says "Porsche" on it, rather than an actual Porsche[1].
[1] i.e. Rock-hard ride, handling sponsored by the Darwin Awards[2], a sintered racing clutch[3] with all of 2mm travel between "out" and "fully engaged", terrifying acceleration, slightly less than sod-all by way of luggage space, a cabin that the Spartans would complain about, in-car entertainment provided by the fearsome racket from the engine / exhaust and a heater that doesn't.
[2] i.e. It'll kill anyone stupid enough to cane one without knowing how to drive it properly.
[3] This shark was actually jumped when they fitted the first automatic transmission. Been downhill since then.
....automatic Mailvelope invites for new recipients....
Or, as I like to call it, an open invitation to all and sundry to spamcast fake Mailvelope invites[1] with moody links in.
(See Mozilla's famous "upgrade flash here now" popup and the subsequent mass pwnage of FF users via a fake "upgrade flash here now" popup for a classic example of this particular stupidity in action).
[1] Goes through spam filters, users trust it, what's not to like?
Presumably in the footballing[1] sense.
[1] Note for Americans and other foreigners: A football[2] manager rumoured to be under threat is often supported by a statement from the club's board saying he has their full support. Once that statement's been trotted out, you can guarantee they'll be sacked within a fortnight.
[2] That's probably "soccer" to you.
The webbie crowd have decided to get into kernel development.
This is the same problem that every fucking web monkey I've ever had the displeasure of dealing with has. Given "way everybody does it that we all know works and is bulletproof" vs. "NEW11!!!!1111 way of doing it that'll look rilly kewl on my CV",guess which one they go for? Every. Fucking. Time. Without. Fail.
.....is everyone knows that, in a minute, one of the "flash-killers"[1] will come to market.
At that point, anyone having just invested a shitload in new flash product or manufacturing capacity will see their ROI vanish and go titsup.com.
[1] i.e. One of the several RAMish RW speed, long lived[2] types well into development and already sampling
[2] Speed and longevity removes the need for complex and (relatively) expensive controllers providing parallel IO and "wear levelling" to make it work.
....the logic of what they are doing totally escapes me.
It's called politics and it has no logic.
Some bunch of third-rate fonctionnaires[1] desperately wanted an agreement for their master to fly in and sign at Kyoto to help them in their quest to become second rate fonctionnaires. As they didn't stand a cat in hell's chance of getting one if they put the lid on rampant industrialisation in China, India et. al. they played the "post imperial guilt" card, handed an exemption to the "developing world" and we are where we are.
The end result is the usual. A treaty that looks good in the press but actually isn't worth the paper it's printed on. This is why I always say that we should be spending the money on finding ways to live with a warmer climate, because there's absolutely fuck-all chance of anything meaningful being done about it, no matter how many agitprop twats wave placards and/or do their Christmas shopping for the cost of a brick.
[1] I find this invokes "parasitic waste of skin" rather better than "civil servant" and a load of adjectives.
Depends whether they need the security code that's supposed to be de rigeur for any write or update operations to plant their bit of code......(!)
If they do, it's: "You have physical access and the security code, that's the way it's supposed to work!".
Useful trick though. "Airbag"[1] systems are so fucking complicated these days that they are, in effect, unfixable if they go wrong (i.e. the length of diagnosis and the parts swapped to track the actual fault source down are going to cost more than the car's worth once out of warranty).
Since some utter twat made having the airbag lamp do it's "on and then off" bit at startup a mandatory MOT item a few years back, it could be incredibly helpful to have a way of convincing the ECU that the airbag system's working, even though the left-hand second redundant side-impact sensor connection is dicky or the third bouncy-castle bit on the right-hand side is two months over its planned obsolescence date.
[1] In quotes as that's a laughable oversimplification of the modern horror story.
A friend has a Sebo and what his wife says about it is unprintable.
The problem is that they're designed as professional appliances. For use in hotels. With lifts......
Great if you live in a bungalow or if you happen to be a professional weightlifter, otherwise they're something of a problem, especially if being hauled out of your chair by your wife to carry "that stupid bloody hoover that you bought" upstairs irks in any way.
The trouble with that is that for your "deniability" to be even remotely "plausible", you first need a government with a light enough touch on teh intahtoobes locally that things like this could go on continually without their knowledge.
I find it terribly difficult to believe that they don't know exactly what's passing through the Great Firewall and who's responsible for it.
At the very least it requires tacit complicity (i.e. not being arsed to bother looking into it).
If it's connected, you can put an "i" in front of its name.
If you put an "i" in front of its name, the iSheep will buy it.
The iSheep are a large group who are happy to pay twice as much as something's actually worth for a version with an "i" in front of its name.
So by merely changing your product into an iProduct by adding some cheap, off-the-shelf electronics, its value is doubled.
(Just checked. iKettles seem to be about 80 quid for a very ordinary, stainless steel kettle. About 30 quid's worth without the "i". I'll bet the additional circuit board cost them all of 50p too.....)
Better still, earth it to the mains supply feeding his beloved Win2K box, shit access control system and antiquated PCs.
Then leave.
That way the next incumbent might stand a chance, as it's difficult to argue that something doesn't need replacing when it's all charred and smoking.
Except of course, that the only reason your car currently swerves when passed by a truck is that you're not expecting it and don't react quickly enough.
Under computer control it won't swerve. At all.
If you've ever experienced an aircraft landing in high winds under both manual and autoland control, you'll know what I mean. The first is a roller coaster, the second won't spill your tea.
The automated parallel parking is fine, that's something I should hope computers can do quicker and more smoothly than any human could.
I take it you've never actually had long-term use of a car with this feature built-in then? I have.
By the time you've found a spot that both you and the car agree is the right size and then fiddled with the thing until you're happy that it's identified the correct space and will do it and then reset all the controls so that it's happy to take over, you could have parked the sodding thing yourself three times!
Doesn't help here that it'll manoeuvre in such a way as to be millimetres from the other vehicles, to the extent where you're sure it'll hit something. As any competant driver knows that if it does hit something "the car did it itself" is not a valid excuse.......(!)
Bloody brilliant for "look what this can do" moments in the pub car park though which is, presumably, what it's really for. Willy waving.
Today's news: Vuln in Adobe Flash player.
Next week's news: Vuln in Adobe Flash player.
Next month's ne.......hell, do I have to spell it out?
As for "what's it for", you might want to ask the BBC why they still refuse to serve anything other than Flash video to PC clients, despite the fact that they'll happily provide other versions to platforms that do not support Flash. Incompetent wankers that they are.
Inconspicuous reliable self-destruct for machines is something that is of interest for a lot of people.
As it's got pretty nearly fuck-all chance of killing the data on disk (and it's the data that you want to destroy, not the machine) this is useless for that purpose.
He's just as clever and driven by the same motivation as the people who used to switch PSUs to 110v so they'd go <BANG> when switched on, scaring the living jesus out of the user.
Twat.
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