* Posts by Mark Pawelek

68 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Dec 2007

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Bill Gates on climate change: Planting trees is not the answer, emissions need to be zeroed out to avoid disaster

Mark Pawelek

Bill Gates has no qualifications, and apparently no education, in climate science. The second sentence in Gates' book: "Greenhouse gases trap heat, causing the average surface temperature of the earth to go up.", is a lie. Heat is not trapped by radiative active gases such as carbon dioxide, CO2. As demonstrated by actual research: ( PDF: https://www.scirp.org/pdf/acs_2020041718295959.pdf )

The idea that heat is trapped by the atmosphere is entirely based on modelling. Models which have never been validated. No attempts to falsify them have ever been tried either. If Gates wanted to add to the sum of human knowledge he should fund empirical work in climate science. He should stop taking doomsday climate modelers seriously.

Greenhouse gas, GHG, models are falsified by real data. Models assume more CO2 makes the atmosphere more opaque to infrared, and that, net, there's less out-going radiation to space. Reality shows: a) the atmosphere has not become more opaque to infrared at higher CO2 levels; and b) when the climate warmed prior to 2016, more OLR was emitted, not less! Greenhouse gas models predict more water vapor in the atmosphere will accelerate warming. c) yet over 4 decades, when the Ganges plain was irrigated (1979 - 2018), its atmospheric relative humidity rose 2%; but average surface temperatures fell by 0.8C. The opposite of what GHG models predict. GHG climate models assume the world works in the opposite sense to reality.

South Australia blacked out by bad bespoke software, not wind farms

Mark Pawelek

I blame everyone : grid operator and wind farm operators.

Not a good description of the real problems. It's well known wind turbines do not work well in stormy weather. They should've had more gas turbines fired up, ready to switch in as the inevitable wind turbine shutdowns happened. As the storm approached, South Australian electricity sources were (approximately): 18% gas turbines, 47% wind turbines, 35% imports from Victoria. They did not have nearly enough gas connected to the grid and were just not prepared in any way. As if they just expected to sail through this. A second mistake they made was running the Victoria interconnector nearly flat out. With inevitable wind turbine failures, the Victoria interconnector was the only source they had that could be quickly switched in to cover for lost generation. South Australia has no hydroelectricity to speak of, which is a source that might normally be expected to fulfill that role. If the interconnector was already nearly maxed out, as it was, no reserve capacity could be quickly switched in. So: zero grid resilience.

Of course the loony hippies don't want resilience. They'd like you all to be off-grid.

Incompetence then. By everyone. The grid operator, wind farm operators. Yes, those who supplied the wind farm software should've made it clear their software was made to protect windfarms from catastrophic grid failure. But then, the wind farm operators should've known that. They must go back to school to study Energy 101 before being allowed out to play again.

Britain is sending a huge nuclear waste shipment to America. Why?

Mark Pawelek

So called toxic radioactive waste not as toxic as anti-nuke fear-mongers would like it to be

This article contains a number of wrong statements by a guy who hasn't much of a clue what he's talking about. He's just an anti-nuclear power campaigner. For example:

"no operator wants to use plutonium-based fuel" -- there are plenty of people who'd love to use plutonium-based fuel. Maybe not current operators. Then again, there is only one current nuclear plant operator in Britain: EdF.

"So nuclear waste remains the Achilles heel of the nuclear industry" -- the amount of spent fuel produced by the nuclear industry is a tiny amount. Worldwide: less than 400,000 tonnes since nuclear power began. A single coal plant makes more solid waste than that in one year (ignoring its global warming gases). Your i-pads, smart phones and other electronic gear make lakes of actually toxic waste going for miles upon miles in China. Used nuclear fuel is not toxic in practice because no one is ever harmed by it. It's secure, guarded and safe. It's not particularly dangerous. Low level radiation does not cause cancer, despite the lies green fearmongers tell you. Cancer is dues to a weak, or suppressed immune system : http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML1532/ML15329A092.pdf

Mark Pawelek

"The plan also contradicts the principle that countries are responsible for managing their own nuclear legacy."

What principle. Something cooked up by Gordon MacKerron in one of his wilder plans for world government?

Mozilla will emit 'first version' of Servo-based Rust browser in June

Mark Pawelek

RE: The poor craftsman blames their tools.

A better craftsman uses the best tools.

Mark Pawelek

Re: Yaya yada yada

Fixing memory leaks is the least we wanted. I want a web browser that occupies no more than 100MB memory - ever.

Mark Pawelek

.. Totally delusional diversion from what should be the main job: make Firefox work, reliably ...

-- Admit it, sometimes it's easier to start again. Because it's C++, so maybe a mess, and good C++ coders probably hard to find. Q: Why would good C++ programmers be hard to find? A: Because good programmers will move on to a better language. Which they did.

I'm excited to hear about new projects written in FP languages like Rust : O brave new world, that has such production code in it.

Mark Pawelek

Re: "think twice about calling anything Graphene"

And C, C#, F#, R, Go, ..., are really easy to google?

Massive global cooling process discovered as Paris climate deal looms

Mark Pawelek

Strange definition of "open access"

"Because of the great importance this paper will be open access" except "your current credentials do not allow retrieval"

hive mind informs climate change believers and sceptics

Mark Pawelek

Re: Scientists, eh!

If everyone agreed CAGW was happening, we still wouldn't agree on how to stop it. So the same problem arises - no agreement - in a different context.

'Turn to nuclear power to save planetary ecology from renewable BLIGHT'

Mark Pawelek

Re: How convenient...

There's no reason a modern, modular, nuclear reactor design such as the AP1000, ABWR, ESBWR should cost more than £4bn to make in the UK. The Chinese think they can make reactors for $2bn each. It should not cost the UK more than twice that.

Mark Pawelek

Re: How convenient...

It's not nuclear waste. It's partly used fuel. Only about 0.4% of the potential fuel is used (including depleted uranium as potential fuel). If we moved to fast breeder, or converter reactors: 99% of that uranium could be used. Potential breeder solutions are the Hitachi-GE PRISM, or one of a number molten salt reactors designs.

Mark Pawelek

Re: How convenient...

Wind and solar are not truly non-carbon because they are intermittent. They are only non-carbon for 80% of the time. They rely on fossil fuel support. Consider these LCA values (measuring carbon emissions). The two values for wind show the LCA with intermittency ignored (wind 1); with intermittency taken into account and fossil fuel support factored in (wind 2).

Nuclear .... 12

Wind (1) ... 11

Wind (2) .. 100

Gas ........ 470

Coal ...... 1000

Nor can this problem be overcome using energy storage. To reduce fossil fuel support to nothing would cost so much storage that wind and solar will be uneconomical.

Wind and solar are two renewables for people who want to bring global warming on.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/10/27/1339061/-GETTING-TO-ZERO-The-hidden-CO2-emissions-from-renewables

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/07/08/1221552/-GETTING-TO-ZERO-Is-renewable-energy-economically-viable

Mark Pawelek

Re: How convenient...

If you prefer to keep government regulation out of this, bring on global warming. The UK nuclear fleet is not subsidised.

Mark Pawelek

Re: Nuclear expensive? Are you joking?

UK nuclear capacity will be down this year to 74% due to the AGR outages. The maximum rated capacity of the UK fleet is 9.19GW. Last year the UK reactors achieved 82%. In comparison, each year US reactors achieve about 90%.

After safety checks and coming back into service (Nov 22 and 26), 3 of the reactors are de-rated to only 70%. This will be for the foreseeable future.

Mark Pawelek

Re: Dunno about warming

The Fukushima reactors could've been retrofitted with better safety measures. TEPCO, the management there, are at fault for not doing so. The real fault was in Japan's nuclear power regulation being run by industry. They really needed an independent regulator with teeth, which they now have. So the Fukushima reactors were bad examples, because this accident should never have happened - even with that Tsunami.

Mark Pawelek

Re: Fukushima harmless?

Throughout Japan, no one died nor suffered illness due to radiation from the plant.

In Fukushima prefecture, 1599 died due to the Tsunami, over 1600 died since due to the stress or other effects from evacuation [suicide, alcoholism, degraded health care, ...]. The radiation doom-mongers were responsible for that; for over-egging the effects of radiation. Radiation has not been shown to be harmful at low levels. The contamination in over 99% of the evacuated areas is a low levels. Green organizations pontificate over global warming but their main remedy is to close down power plants. At grid-level, their favoured alternatives: solar and wind are not viable.

Mark Pawelek

Re: Dunno about warming

"The sea level keeps rising"

- by a little. IPCC expect the sea to rise between 0.2m and 0.6m by the end of the century.

I'd say Lewis is right to be "sceptical about ... hugely accelerated sea level rises"

Mark Pawelek

The high costs of Hinkley C are due to three main factors:

1. There was only one bidder. Although the project started off with two bidders one quickly dropped out leaving the EDF consortium with a monopoly.

2. The reactor, the AREVA EPR, is the most expensive possible design. This EPR reactor has no modular features, so takes longer to build because it's made onsite rather than in the factory. It doesn't take advantage of economies of scale and safety compliance takes longer. The EPR has over-elaborate safety systems, which simply cost more. For comparison, on a per-megawatt basis it uses 20% to 25% more concrete and steel than the modular AP1000 design. An AP1000 will clearly be more competitive. Worldwide comparison shows AP1000 designs being built with far les problems than EPRs.

3. The EPR is the only post-9/11 reactor design approved by our regulator: ONR. Alternative designs (AP1000, ABWR) undergoing approval will take years to fully pass approval; e.g. the ABWR will take 3 more years.

Considering the three points above, we would normally have a good argument for dropping the Hinkley C deal. Unfortunately, since 2005 when Labour gave the green light for new nuclear builds Britain has dithered and dothered. Our main reactor fleet of AGRs are due to retire by 2023. Our last Magnox will close next year. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_Kingdom#Operating> 71% of our AGRs are 1970 vintage or earlier, and their graphite moderator is cracking under the strain. It may be risky trying to extend the life of all these AGRs past 2023.

We recently closed at lot of coal plants that failed the EC Large Combustion Plant Directive (LCPD). Many more coal plants are due to close in the next 10 years. Even our gas-fired plants will begin to feel their age too. Baseload electricity has to come from somewhere. This electrical capacity crunch is getting more serious the longer it lasts. Winter blackouts anyone?

Renewable energy 'simply won't work': Top Google engineers

Mark Pawelek

Re: Between a rock and a hard place

@Stuart 22

The problem at the moment is that we are ONLY focusing on energy efficiency. The Google engineers say we really need game-changing - disruptive technologies. 10% of all energy R&D should be spent on such tech because we need to change the rules of the game. Apart from fission research, no meaningful money is currently being spent on such disruptive non-carbon tech. The UK has spent nothing on fission research for the last 20 years. This one dimensional focus on energy efficiency has fooled many people into thinking there's a RE-only solution to stop global warming. No such RE solution exists. Solar and wind remain absolutely dependent on fossil fuel. In UK, the so-called "Saudi Arabia of Wind", we often have very long low-wind periods lasting weeks. Such periods can happen at any time of the year. For example 1 to 20 Sept 2014, when wind produced only 5% of nameplate capacity. Battery backup for each 2MW windmill would need to store 200MWh - that's about 200 container sized batteries for each windmill!

We need to spending 10%, or more, of our energy R&D on disruptive tech such as nuclear molten salt reactors, liquid metal-cooled reactors and fission. It's not happening. The blame for this lies at the door of the green movement.

Want to see the back of fossil fuels? Calm down, hippies. CAPITALISM has an answer

Mark Pawelek

Tim's hopes for solar and wind are doomed

Solar and wind will always be too expensive, although solar has the potential to beat wind on price - even in the UK. The main problem with solar and wind is that

* the sun does not shine at night

* short, cloudy winter days can result in very little solar, when we need energy most

* UK can go for weeks on end with a tiny amount of wind energy delivered to its electricity grid (just like the first 3 weeks of Sept 2014).

* energy use is only 1/3 electricity anyhow. What about industrial energy, transport fuels, etc?

This necessitates backup using

1. Dispatchable gas or coal fired electricity AND/OR

2. Energy storage, charged up during times of plenty

If (1), we find that solar and wind are no longer carbon free, and that we need twice as much plant to deliver our electricity. All those coal and gas fired stations must be built and manned 'just in case'; adding greatly to expense.

What about (2) energy storage? When energy storage is factored in to support renewables we find that renewables can't even generate the energy needed to sustain its own production/reproduction. Energy returned on energy investment (EROEI / EROI) studies show that renewables + energy storage won't work. Nor will route 2 stop blackouts.

Countrywide renewables such as wind and solar won't work for the UK. Nor can tidal, wave, geothermal, hydro, ... That's why the Tories plan to build lots of new nuclear power plants and invest in fracking.

Is alternative energy worth it?: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=16729

Catch-22 of Energy Storage: http://bravenewclimate.com/2014/08/22/catch-22-of-energy-storage/

Slash tuition fees for STEM students, biz boss body begs UK.gov

Mark Pawelek

Re: A new way, won't make the hay

1. Businesses don't want to pay for training.

2. You make it sound as if a STEM graduate can be taught in a few months. It takes 2 years of A levels followed by 3 years as an undergraduate.

3. Business doesn't think 5 years ahead. They want someone now, whom they'd like to sack in 18 months.

4. Graduates want degrees. A degree allows one job mobility and some negotiating rights.

Fukushima radioactivity a complete non-issue on West Coast: Also for Fukushima locals, in fact

Mark Pawelek

Re: Cs-137 plume

If we take the water in only the top 1 metre of only a tenth of the Pacific ocean and assume 110 kg of caesium-137 diffused into it the concentration would be about 7 nano grams per cubic metre, with an activity of 22.5 becquerel (Bq). If we assumed the caesium-137 diffused to a depth of 10 metres, the activity in a cubic metre would be 2.25 becquerel.

Radiation is a lot more dangerous inside one's body than outside. Alpha and beta radiation won't get past your skin. Only gamma- can harm you but it has to get past the water first. I reckon about 8 cm of water will take half of the gammas out (pure guess)

Note 1: 1 becquerel (Bq) = 1 disintegration per second.

Note 2: To reduce typical gamma rays by a factor of a billion, thicknesses of shield needs to be 4.2 meters of water.

To conclude, I wouldn't care a jot about swimming in the Pacific, unless I was afraid of sharks.

Apple’s Mac turns 30: How Steve Jobs’ baby took its first steps

Mark Pawelek

Steve Jobs orchestrated Silicon Valley wide conspiracy to keep tech workers wages low

1) How Silicon Valley’s most celebrated CEOs conspired to drive down 100,000 tech engineers’ wages:

http://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon-valleys-most-celebrated-ceos-conspired-to-drive-down-100000-tech-engineers-wages/

2) Why George Lucas, Eric Schmidt, (and yes, Steve Jobs) Should Go to Jail: Conspiring to Reduce Wages of 100,000 Tech Pros

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/01/george-lucas-eric-schmidt-steve-jobs-go-jail.html

Fed up with Windows? Linux too easy? Get weird, go ALTERNATIVE

Mark Pawelek

Re: The only weird thing is this article. How so?

Solaris and BSD, are still based on that ancient Unix design, back in the day when consoles were dumb and one typed in line by line - hence the term 'line editor'. Solaris, BSD and Linux variants aren't alternatives; just more of the same.

'Silent' staff stood by as £100m BBC IT project tanked – DG

Mark Pawelek

Not all the fault of Siemens / Deloitte

The contract was given to Siemens, with consulting by Deloitte, in February 2008 but taken back in-house in summer 2009 after the BBC decided that Siemens were not delivering. Up to then losses were only £11m. The BBC's real blunder was to blindly continue with Siemens solution rather than first evaluate it before continuing in-house.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_controversies#2008.E2.80.932013:_Digital_Media_Initiative

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/review_report_research/vfm/digital_media_initiative.pdf

Mark Pawelek

Tony Hall is full of so much crap.

These execs create the corporate culture we all have to work in. It's full of people who just follow orders. They dot their t's, cross their i's and never cause trouble. It's the Tony Hall's of this world who're responsible for this culture.

It's bizarre how these self-proclaimed masterminds justify their salaries by claiming to manage. The truth emerges and we discover that none of them could be bothered to actually talk to their employees to find out what's actually going on.

Spotify: If musicians don't give us their stuff they get pirated more

Mark Pawelek

It isn't called theft it's called copyright infringement. Andrew knows this full well. Nor does copyright infringement have any relationship to piracy.

Jack Vance: Science fiction’s master of magic, mischief and sex

Mark Pawelek

RIP dear Mr Vance

The Eyes of the Overworld will always be my Vance favorite.

Why are scribes crying just 'cos Google copied their books? asks judge

Mark Pawelek
Thumb Up

Re: Seems counterproductive...

Go Google :-)

Not cool, Adobe: Give the Ninite guys a job, not the middle finger

Mark Pawelek

Lets all ditch Flash

I uninstalled Flash yesterday - all 6 versions (6,7,8,910,11) I found on the PC. The motivation to do this were the regular red blobs in the PCs event log. On finding these errors I googled for a solution. Found nothing, so decided to unistall it. Interesting that the Flash auto-update had already been disabled my me. The only reason I unistalled it were the regular issues I've seen from Adobe updates. I wish I could do the same for Acrobat.

As for the security issues - it's mostly the users fault; if they won't stop visiting dodgy sites and clicking on obvious evil links they're going to find their PCs attacked. The only antivirus I have on my PCs are the ones they force me to use at work. They even put AV on the database servers sitting behind corporate firewalls! What's that? - architecture done with paint-by-numbers?

Gov report: Actually, evil City traders DIDN'T cause the banking crash

Mark Pawelek

Naturally all the money belongs to bankers anyhow...

According to Tim Worstall, CDS don't exist. The US government never bailed out AIG to payoff the hedge funds and others holding these CDS which the London office of AIG never sold to anyone. Tim Worstall offers an alternative version of history where finaciers do no wrong. They don't fabricate CDO mortgages to fail (those hedgies just happened to guess that there would be a massive blowout. They guessed that the US treasury would pay them off because, off course, the US treasury belongs to them - as does all money. They've earned it - they work 16 hour days to make all that money.

RBS and NatWest FAIL downs services across UK

Mark Pawelek

Re: FAIL felt as far as Oregon

Nationwide

Mark Pawelek

Re: Bloodbath of the Contractors

When a business person thinks about software all they see it the UI. They think the UI is it. A hole-in-the-wall has a pretty simple UI so the software must be really simple, right?. They can out source the whole lot to some guy in Vietnam, hire a business analyst, a project manager, a cool babe to do the translation, and a product owner and still save loads of doh left over for their bonuses.

Sir James Dyson slams gov's 'obsession' with Silicon Roundabout

Mark Pawelek

Follow the Money

The problem isn't limited to government.

As Josh Lerner wrote recently [see footnotes], more and more venture capital funding is being channeled into IT (social networks, etc) because they can get their capital back within 8-10 years. 4-5 years funding followed by another 4-5 years selling off the business.

Many other business areas [especially hard tech for export] don't all such precise and time limited investments. Venture capital funding for cleantech has bought no rewards (losses if anything). IT/Internet has been the consistent payer for them.

This government takes it's lead from business. It may not seem like it to you (working in IT) that there's a boom going on but, relatively speaking, there is. When it stops there will be little investment in the West in anything. I don't see it getting better.

Josh Lerner, The Narrowing Ambitions of Venture Capital, MIT Technology Review <http://www.technologyreview.com/news/429024/the-narrowing-ambitions-of-venture-capital/>

Josh Lerner, The Architecture of Innovation, Harvard Business Review Press

What Compsci textbooks don't tell you: Real world code sucks

Mark Pawelek

Re: They never seem to point you in the direction of what is "right"

They never seem to point you in the direction of what is "right"

They do. Just remember that there is no such thing as quick and dirty; there's either clean and working or slow, dirty and horrid. http://allankelly.blogspot.co.uk/2009/09/quick-dirty-myth.html

All sorts of people have written good books on how to write good code. Such as:

Michael Feathers - Working Effectively with Legacy Code

Steve McConnell - Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction

Steve Freeman and Nat Pryce - Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests

Martin Fowler et al - Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code

Bob Martin - Clean Code

Bob Martin - Agile Principles, Patterns and Practices in C#

Bob Martin - Agile Software Development, Principles, Patterns, and Practices

Neal Ford - The Practical Programmer

Furthermore there are now lots of free courses teaching programming on the internet at places like coursera, Udacity, edX. Someone's even written an aggregator for you: http://www.class-central.com/

Mark Pawelek

Re: Recognise this picture?

This is another management problem. By not embedding code-review into normal production process, a problem like this is caused when ever someone tries to introduce code review from the ground up. Comment on someone's code and they'll regard it as either a personal attack. In such places managers are likely to be predominantly ignorant of coding. The best thing you can do is leave such a place.

PS: Code review is one of the few coding practices for which there is overwhelming evidence in favour. Aka - everyone should be doing it (or pairing).

Mark Pawelek

Re: I'm not convinced very many skilled programming staff exist.

It's still a money problem. If skilled programmers aren't around they could be trained ... but ... "that will cost too much"

Mark Pawelek

What are they doing giving jobs to cowboys?

We shouldn't be employing cowboys to write code, unless we want to drive our businesses to a slaughter factory.

Seriously folks. Try to put recruitment into the hands of people who know what they're doing; then there's a chance they'll be able to write good code rather than garbage.

Mark Pawelek

Re: @AndrueC -- Include some comments

In other words, you can't be arsed to update a comment or three after you poke at the code?

No. It's better to break down code blocks into short functions (aka methods) and to use meaningful, explanatory names for these methods. Then your code is self-documenting and there's no possibility of comments becoming detached from code, or worse, comments mis-describing code. The main problem with this technique is a tendency for the less wise to economise by writing short method names, or to think that, just because they have a long method name, the code must be self-documenting. Public API code still needs documenting.

Mark Pawelek

Refactor when you must but put tests in place to prevent breaking changes

redpola : Ultimately, apart from "but the developer likes it" there is no justification from any angle to introduce change for change's sake.

One compelling reason to refactor code is to make it testable by introducing seams or decoupling dependencies. People tend to exaggerate in these forums.

Amazon Kindle Paperwhite review

Mark Pawelek

Obsolete by well over 10 years

It still doesn't support epub. The amazon book format is based on mobi pocket book format which is itself based on html 3.2. Html 3.2 has no proper css support. The maker can not easily style these books. It's obsolete by well over 10 years. If Amazon must use a proprietary format they should, at least, keep it up-to-date.

PS: epub is also slightly obsolete but much less so than mobi format.

Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight e-reader review

Mark Pawelek
Coat

Amazon == stone-age technology

There's one crucial thing you missed from this review. I have a kobo touch. The kobo touch has no way to follow a hyperlink. For instance, if I want to follow a reference or an indexed word I can't.

Is it possible to follow hyperlink with the Nook?

PS: I like the Amazon reader hardware. Shame it can't handle epub. mobi and amazon format books use html 3.2, which hails from 20 years back; no useful css.

Why women won't apply for IT jobs

Mark Pawelek

Women out there - please tell us what you want!

[q]I take on at least 2 graduates per annum as trainee (permanent) web developers. ... about £140 per diem.[/q]

£140 per diem is far more than women can expect to earn in a nail bar or behind a retail counter, etc.

He taking on recent grads with no actual experience. Why is he unable to recruit any women?

Women out there - please tell us what you want!

Mark Pawelek

You're all wrong

quoting ...

* most want 5 different specialties in one body

* cycnical job ads written to perfectly match the only (internal) candidate that can fill the job

* disconnect between the insane HR departments and the real world

I disagree with these points made early on {repeated later}. Some people I know deliberately ask for more than they need because they only want the best and most experienced developers applying. The perception is that the best developers are several times more productive than the average and that the worst developers will actually cost you by writing rubbish.

[All this is from the kind of informal survey results I build in my mind from having talked about recruitment (with others) for several years now. I go out to several cons and at least 25 after-work meetups each year,]

The issue is the derth of women coders everywhere and who's actually addressing that issue here? If they want cheap techies from outside the UK why aren't they bringing in cheap female techies?

HR don't specify technical requirements - techies do that.

I personally wander how severe the anti-IT peer pressure is that women exert on others?

PS: My comments refer to dev roles.

IP law probe MPs hunt for smoking gun, find plenty of smoke

Mark Pawelek

Less waffle, more evidence please

[quote]an insight into how policy-making within the IPO was driven[/quote]

In the USA, such policy-making has been driven by Disney and Hollywood, their lawyers, lobbyists, and paid cronies in Congress. They've extended copyright law over 11 times since the mid-1970s. Has that generated any 'economic growth' at all? Does IP law, in any way, promote productivity gains? Just show me the evidence. otherwise I must assume Andrew Orlowski is applying similar 'magical thinking' as those he discredits. The theory behind patent law says that the general productivity of the populace is enhanced by publication of inventions (but only if the inventions are thereby applied). Better for us that Google, Oracle (and everyone coding) use best practice. Show me a single patented software invention that has led to any productivity increases in computer programming. Show me evidence - I don't need to read more waffle by Andrew Orlowski. I'll show you loads of open source products that have enhanced my productivity; loads of books and talks promoting ideas held in common (principles, patterns, DRY, SOLID, simple design, TDD, etc) - I can't find a single patent that made me a better (more productive) coder.

Mark Pawelek

Where the evidence?

Bizarre that Andrew Orlowski, who often champions science, can be so wishy-washy and unscientific when it comes to economics. Is that economics for you? - must it always be about magical thinking, blind prejudice and faith. Is that ever any room for evidence in economics?

The USA became the greatest economy in the World in the 19th century when they, more or less, ignored so called intellectual property. In the last 35 years, the era of its downfall, they've passed endless new IP laws to extend and enhace the IP.

Patent law was created to ecourage manufacturers to make their ideas public so that everyone could use best-practice and the general productivity of the population be thereby enhanced. You may think that's just quaint 19th century economic thinking but, pray, prove that we do economics better today. Where's the evidence?

[quote]Yeates also noted that officials had downgraded the contribution of creative industries from 8 per cent of GDP to 3 per cent overnight, much to everyone’s surprise.[/quote]

Exactly what is GDP anyhow? Does it bear much (or any) relationship to 'wealth creation'. Why is GDP so important to Andrew Orlowski? Why not discuss productivity increases, as the driver of economic growth? I'm keen to know how to enhance my programming productivity by patenting so-called software inventions. Will these inventions help me with fewer bugs, enhanced readability, better maintenance, etc. No. Software patents do not create wealth, but only serve to move it from the many to the few. [but they don't even do that very well - ask Oracle!]. How will 90 years copyright protection for my source code encourage me to write more and better code? Given that code is obsolete within a couple of years [we will always write it better the 2nd time around], how are long (c) terms beneficial to programmers?

What magical thinking can anyone bring to bear on these questions?

Study finds water cycle accelerating with warming

Mark Pawelek

Water vapour is a greenhouse gas

[quote]And of course the water cycle is the planets thermostat. Hotter=more vapour=more cloud carrying heat up to radiate to space = more cold rain falling to cool planet surface and sea and more cloud shielding the earth from the sun.

Completely obliterating the effects of and CO2 change by and large.[/quote]

LOL. Such extreme ignorance. Water vapour is a greenhouse gas - more so than carbon dioxide.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/29/water-vapour-climate-change

UK biz needs fattening up on gov IT contracts, says No10 bod

Mark Pawelek

Small UK companies sell-out ASAP

Anonymous Coward said: "even Switherland has industry and manufacturing nowdays"

- as a proportion of the economy, Switherland's manufacturing is up there with Germany's.

- why is no one addressing the major problem raised here? - that small UK companies sell-out ASAP. Should any ex-employer be reading this, I'm not talking about my experience - I'm talking about all the people I meet at tech events (e.g. the people who sold out their excellent small company to a bunch of idiots without doing any providence check before accpting the dosh, etc.)

University of Florida drops plans to axe CompSci for sports

Mark Pawelek

Where's the money going?

- What size pay rise will Gerhard Ritter get now that he's chairing a much larger department? Call yourself journalists? - you need to remember the basic question - where's the money going?

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