Posts by Alex King 213 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Oct 2007
… even for government procurement.
If Palantir are offering to build and run all that for £900k a year, then they are making their money elsewhere or in other ways.
There should have been red flags, red flashing lights and sirens all over that bid. Instead it’s actually awarded to Fashco.
There should be a legal challenge to this.
Ah, the tedious old “if we don’t do it, someone else will, so we might as well” argument that has been used to argue against everything from stopping tax evasion, to reducing CO2, to paying a truly living wage everywhere, and everything else that requires global co-operation.
Play a new tune. This one’s really tired.
Equally to blame? Presumably in the way in which rape victims are equally to blame on account of wearing a short skirt? Or in the way in which a carjacking victim is for not locking their doors when in the car? Or that I would be if I got burgled because I didn't brick up my windows?
FFS.
"LibDem MPs, individually, pledged to vote against any tuition fee rises. This was not just an "if we win the election we will..." promise, it was an outright, no-matter-what pledge. It was not just an entry in the manifesto, it was a pledge made by individual MPs, including Clegg. That sort of promise should not be allowed to be broken, and the LibDems should have stuck to their guns on it."
That's all very well, and I don't disagree, but I can't see that they be disproportionately damned for this just because it was their first go at being in government. Both Labour and the Tories have broken multitudinous pledges in government even when they had it all to themselves.
The LibDems must be enormously frustrated; they've put in an overwhelmingly competent performance as a junior coalition partner and demonstrated that you really didn't need some of the nastier aspects of the Tory ideology to start the economy into recovery.
Unfortunately, in sanding off some of the rough edges of the Tory party (some of the dust has fallen into UKIP's lap), they've had the effect of making the larger partner more acceptable to more people.
The difference between this story and the one about the Mini E story on the BBC is the reaction of the manufacturer's PR and Legal departments.
Tesla seem determined to get all pissy and litigious about any negative coverage, and that just fosters the impression of a defensive company with something to hide. Instead, they should take the criticism on the chin, tell the world they'll look into the causes of the issue, and then report the "fix" that they come up with a few weeks/months down the line. Trying to get your retaliation in hard and fast like this just pisses everyone off - it's just really bad PR.
By contrast BMW didn't make such a fuss about the BBC MINI-E article, as they saw it for what it was - a test of the infrastructure more than the car which - surprise surprise - found the vehicle charging infrastructure for the UK to be lacking. BMW have gone on to respond with their upcoming i3 and i8 - which you can bet your bottom dollar will be properly and thoroughly engineered solutions that will not risk damaging the company's hard-won reputation, supported by a competent PR effort.
Tesla - you do not win at PR by starting an argument with the media.
"WWF, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Oxfam* are multinational charities each of whose incomes is in the 100s of millions and all spend a significant amount of that income on lobbying government."
Oooh, that's a lot of money, until you compare it to the income of oil companies.
Incidentally, I'm OK with fracking, as long as the gas used goes to replace coal-fired generation. I'd lump the fracking nimbys in with the wind turbine ones.
We don't have a great record of spending our own money on things that are actually good for us. It's not an option to only spend money on the things we're using at the time. We all benefit from the BBC, whether or not we actually watch it in much the same way that we all benefit from the NHS whether or not we ever see a doctor.
As has been pointed out ad nauseam, the majority of BBC output is legally available without paying a licence fee, so you have your options right there
The alternatives are to rely on the likes of Sky (brought to you by those fine, upstanding public servants who brought you Fox News, the News of the World and ploice brbvery), Channel 4 News (who are unquestionably further left than the beeb), or ITV (who have barely been able to afford a pot to piss in for the past decade).
To pararphrase Churchill - the Licence fee funded BBC is the worst arrangement for impartial broadcasting there is - apart from all the others we've tried.
Oh, and if you think the BBC is left-biased, you should try listening to Jeremy Vine on Radio 2 - such spittle-flecked right-wing reactionary nonsense I've never heard this side of Richard Littlejohn. Even if the beeb is a little leftist overall, so be it - so is the UK, and the right will always have Sky, the Mail and the Telegraph to go to.
Utter balls. If TV advertising didn't get people to buy stuff, the companies wouldn't waste their money on it (or maybe you're saying that the private sector is incompetent? You know, that sector that you want to run the BBC?). I'd rather the cost was up front (pay money for TV), than built into every advertised product that I buy (whether I knew they advertised on C4/ITV/Sky/whatever. Just because YOU can't see the cost or don't know how to measure it, it doesn't mean it's not there...
And how can commercial stations compete with the BBC? Very nicely in fact - the top rating shows on the BBC and ITV have very similar viewing figures.
See those cute little short films that come on in between the long ones on Channel 4, ITV? They're called 'ad-vert-ise-ments'. When you buy something from one of the companies that pay for those, you're paying for those channels.
Dear me, 'free-to-air' is not the same as 'free'.
The BBC is imperfect, but it's being made worse by trying to compete on a near-commercial basis with the commercial channels. I'm convinced that until such time as we loose the BBC, we will never appreciate just how good it is, compared to ANY other broadcaster around the world.
This article's a bit ripe too; it seems that the Register is entirely capable of maintaining an oversimplified climate-sceptic viewpoint without the need for any high-profile lobbying.
In general, it just feels like - as a nation - we're lashing out at anything that smells vaguely of authority in an attempt to cure our general end-of-empire malaise. As an earlier poster has pointed out, one side or other of the political spectrum is always lambasting the beeb for being biased towards the other - which is a good indication of balance.
We should all just calm down and stop expecting everything that's wrong with the BBC to be fixed overnight - or even in 55 days...
Amazing that we seem to be accepting the word of this French newspaper at face value. I don't buy that this was the US govt yet - it seems a trifle sloppy to be leaving such a big fat trail of activity. Maybe it was and maybe it wasn't, but there's a distinct lack of critical evaluation of sources in this article.
However I am a bit gobsmacked that the leader of a first-world country in the 21st century didn't have a networked PC!
Usually I don't like to quote others, but I think Mr Fry was onto something when he said:
'It's now very common to hear people say, "I'm rather offended by that", as if that gives them certain rights. It's no more than a whine. It has no meaning, it has no purpose, it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. "I'm offended by that." Well, so fucking what?'
Nobody has the right to be protected from offence. We make progress against things that most people find unacceptable by opening them up to the oxygen of publicity, not via supression and enforcement.
Of course, the reason that Kent Police have done this is that someone has taken offence, reported a crime, so they have to clear it up for the sake of their stats. What a massive clusterfuck of idiocy.
There's a whole heap of grumpy naysayers here. This is quite clearly the best electric car ever to be sold. In any reasonable sense, this is competitive in its chosen range of premium sports saloons in terms of price, weight, looks, performance and range between stops.
Tesla are even doing it right - sell this in a big, premium car first; charging the prices that Nissan do for their Leaf is daft because it's hugely uncompetitive in the size bracket it sits in. There's a reason tech innovations tend to come in first in the largest, most premium models, but the most part of the automotive industry seems to have forgotten this.
No, there's nothing much wrong with the car - the problem is the infrastructure. The model I'd like to see is the "better place" battery-swapping filling station. Maybe slightly more realistic in terms of investment would be points that could charge the car to over 200 miles range in less than 20 minutes.
A comprehensive network of either of these would be my tipping point for adoption, so long as you could show me that total cost of ownership and usage over 5 years would be no greater than the IC alternative. Do that, and in 4 years time I'll buy a second hand one for about 25% of its original retail price, like I have done with my current V8 Jag, bought at 4 years old.
I'll not mention the touchscreen, in the full anticipation that it'll go the way of the quartic steering wheel 'ere long.
I've not found anything yet that I'd want to do on my phone that a good, solid 3G connection wasn't ample for.
In the centre of big cities, you're generally not far from a decent free WiFi signal these days, if you even did need such a fat pipe. I'd much rather networks concentrated on getting better 3G coverage on transit routes than this overpriced tosh. First network to put masts along the east and west coast mainlines gets my next contract.
Oh, and as others have pointed out, fast bandwidth and low data limits are utterly pointless - it's like selling a thirsty supercar with a ten litre fuel tank.
"So the world is E.coli free then, so long as everything that needs cooking is properly cooked?"
No, you have billions of them swimming in your body at the moment, causing you no ill effect. If it carries (or has the potential to carry HARMFUL E.coli, then it needs cooking, organic or not, as the article states it just reduces the risk (from some small amount to some other slightly smaller amount).
If you don't cook it then you're accepting a small risk whether it's organic or not, so it's not relevant to this article in terms of health benefit, so long as you follow the far more imprtant precaution of cooking the damn chicken at home. it's like worrying about how clean the knife that just stabbed you was.
"Bravata and colleagues found organic fruits and vegetables are 30 per cent less likely to be contaminated with pesticides than their conventional counterparts, although they were not necessarily 100 per cent free of pesticides."
30 percent of what? If it's 30% of almost zero chance anyway, its not important.
"They also found children on organic diets had lower levels of pesticides in their urine, compared to those on conventional diets"
In their urine. Good. That's where the body puts stuff it doesn't want. Again, how much lower? Were the higher levels in any way harmful? Pffft.
"Tthey did find organic chicken and pork appeared to reduce exposure to antibiotic-resistant bacteria."
'Appeared to reduce exposure' is hardly a ringing endorsement. All bacteria are dead if you cook it properly anyway - which you should always do - right kids? Again, a reduction without stating prior levels indicates nothing in terms of health benefit.
"Which is why I never buy processed if I can help it, organic or not :P"
Never buy processed eh? Unless you go and pick it off the wild bush yourself, it has been processed - it's all a matter of degree.
The amount of fresh produce that we in the west waste is neither here nor there. People in developing countries need to be able to grow food near where they live. When we've succeeded in reliably producing enough food for everyone in the places they live, then I'll start worrying about how happy the chickens are and whether I'm being cheated out of the oppoprtunity to buy white tomatoes.
Such a ridiculous first-world debate.
What's compassion got to do with anything? We tend to show compassion for the ill, and he's been diagnosed with a mental illness.
That you'd wish to deny him that compassion because he's been fighting for it is akin to chucking someone into the lake because they've denied they're a witch.
Hmm, if your hotel gets into the top ten dirtiest on TripAdvisor then either (a) you have a dirty hotel or (b) you've pissed a lot of other people off in some way (maybe these women and housekeepers you're accused of abusing.)
Depending on which it is, he should spend less on his legal team and more on running his hotel/life better. Either way, it's hardly TripAdvisor's fault.
Are you saying that a car will get no NCAP stars at all if it doesn't have such a system, or just that it'll lose a few points. I can't see this being the former, especially if this is less than 18 months away.
I'd happily buy a 0*-NCAP rated car. In fact I have, when I bought a rather old one a few years ago.
If, as people are suggesting, this might be a low-speed only system, then while it may reduce prangs by a certain percentage, it'll be the less severe and dangerous ones. Whoop de do.
Oh, and to the person who suggested that it'll have no impact on price because options' values are largely wiped out come resale time, and that only idiots should buy new: guess what - if it wasn't for those idiots then there would be a smaller used car market which would push up prices. The cost of these options is hidden in the prices of all stuff that these depreciating assets are used to do and the companies and other organisations which use them. There is so much economics fail in your post it's practically unquantifiable.
Oh dear. get it in the Lancet or the BMJ or something half credible and I may start to believe you. Lewis - go report to Ben Goldacre for a lesson in good science, 'cos this isn't it, for the many reasons described above. Actually, it's not good journalism either, as the source evaluation is shoddy too.
I'm not familiar with the exact journal in question, but most publications with the terms "Family" and "American" in them tend to be of a christian, capitalist, right-wing flavour and have an agenda. That agenda is unlikely to have much in common with impartial health advice.
