Posts by Zojo

Zuckerberg thinks he's cyber-Jesus – and publishes a 6,000-word world-saving manifesto

Re: Bye Felicia

"when you're inheriting a large amount of wealth you're also inheriting the social connections that go with it, and this has a normalizing effect on your attitudes and beliefs."

Interesting statement. Normalise to what norms? Whatever you think of wealth, I think it would be difficult to argue that someone born into immense wealth does not have a distorted view of the world, and is likely to have attitudes and beliefs that reflect the unusual and highly privileged environment they live in. We can all think of examples of very rich people, born into that wealth, who seem, let's say, a bit unusual in their attitudes and beliefs.

Re: Wasn't he the man...

You completely missed the point of that comment. Let me clarify it for you.

"So you don't hate rich people, but you DO hate people who create an account on Facebook."

Now do you see the point? Whether or not rich people should be hated is NOT the issue. The issue is, why boast about how you despise people who use faceook? You appear to think this worthy of merit. And you seek to demonstrate your wisdom by contrasting this with how you don't hate rich people, as if there is any link, or the one balances the other. But both are equally irrational and unworthy, and categorise people in an arbitrary way. Despising everyone on facebook is just as ridiculous, and unpleasant, as hating every rich person.

Hope that clears things up for you.

Exciting MIT droplet discovery could turbocharge power plants, airships and more

Re: pedantry alert

Is the opposite of a "tree hugger" a "tech tosser"?

NHS IT: what went wrong, what will go wrong

On the other hand...

Its interesting that The Reg plays up that Fujitsu pulled out, while other reports suggest that CfH (Connecting for Health, the NHS central IT body) "terminated" their contract.

Not many in the NHS are weeping over Fujitsu's departure. They started off with an attitude, something like "This is what you are getting, take it or leave it" and went downhill from there. The product they were pushing, which had been agreed between them and the DoH, without any involvement from the poor s*ds who would have to use it, was simply not fit for purpose. When Trusts pointed this out, they were threatened with financial penalties if they didn't shut up and get on with it.

I don't know who to blame for this shoddy mess, but I do know, from personal experience, that Fujitsu were difficult, unhelpful, arrogant, ill-informed about the NHS, and will not be missed.

The only downside is that now we might get lumbered with BT. Out of the frying pan...

NHS IT loses its interim head

Blameworthy

Bernard, those who work for the NHS are not civil servants.

Also, the idea that EDS/Accenture/Fujitu etc are blameless is wrong. They were eager to take the money and apparently happy to be involved in a succession of IT failures. If they know it will fail, because "civil servants" will sabotage it, and they have professional standards, why do they keep signing up to these things? Because they make big bucks out of it regardless of the final result. To me that makes them complicit.

Its a sort of drug pusher - user scenario. Which is the pusher and which the user? That depends on your perspective, but neither are innocent of blame, and both are tainted by the relationship. For one side it is about the money, for the other, the need.