Posts by S Larti 132 publicly visible posts • joined 15 May 2009
"This meant it could be a week or two between writing your code and getting back a printout informing you that one syntax error had stopped the program from being run. No I’m not making this up, that was how it was done."
I remember it so well. Your chances of getting a result back from the County computer on your first attempts at code were pretty slim. We weren't so much badly-taught as blind and being led by the one eyed.
Is it Bletchley Park or the national museum of computing getting this grant? Because when I visited the place just after they opened the Tunny room & we had a tour around the colossus related stuff it was made clear that the NMC is separate from BP and rather than getting funding from it has to pay for the space it occupies.
As is made clear here: http://www.tnmoc.org/about.aspx
The fact that the atmosphere contained more CO2 when the ice formed doesn't mean that the planet was warmer, unless other factors were also the same as they are now. Nor does the melting of ice depend on CO2 content in the ppm level!
Which is not to say that this isn't an interesting finding.
Ideally, if you can save £6Bn then that's £6Bn you can spend on something useful for the economy (or less tax you need to take).
But even if we assume that the government would only waste it somewhere else and "Buy British" regardless, very little of the £12Bn gets back into the UK economy because very little of it goes to pay UK workers. BAe are no more 'British' than BP - except when it suits politicians.
Defence is the only industry where the customer is constrained to buy British (or Euro-collaborative) & never mind the cost, the quality or the lead times involved.
Voice Over: This is a frightened city. Over these houses, over these streets hangs a pall of fear. Fear of a new kind of violence which is terrorizing the city. Yes, gangs of old ladies attacking defenceless fit young men.
(Film of old ladies beating up two young men; then several grannies walking aggressively along street, pushing passers-by aside.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CStfT8gCrjM
So we get a lot of expensively useless toys. Rather than the MOD spending all the money stocking up on light bulbs at £22 each when they are available for 65p, or £103 a time for screws, believed to be on sale online for £2.60.
Oh wait, they've done both.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12643966
"Firstly, there should be an attempt to rein in the vast and continually burgeoning range of bullshit A-Levels which are easy and fun to do but no use whatever – and which tempt kids away from the true path."
But will it happen?
And, Tom15, I'm afraid that General Studies is not only still there, it's compulsory at many schools even though few universities will touch it.
If something has to go the escorts are probably the least valuable part of the navy, designed to fight the last war or the one before that. We certainly don't need 22 to escort a maximum of 2 carriers. Pity the RN, which pioneered carriers, never really embraced them, and that the FAA is the poor relation of the RN & the RAF.
But we know that this government will be no less pork barrel driven than the last, whether it's directorships for ministers, profits for BAe or jobs in marginal constiuencies it's never getting the forces the right kit, let alone the right kit when they need it.
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