* Posts by John Smith 19

16327 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

DARPA awards $76.6m supercomputer challenge

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Coat

I know why SGI did'nt get a lookin

Someone stole their MoJo.

You can guess what DVD's in the pocket.

How an ancient printer can spill your most intimate secrets

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Boffin

First side channel attack

I recall reading an article indicating remote reading of moving head hard drives going back to 1967.

Note the drives in question were the size of a twin tub washing machine.

Judge rejects Accenture appeal against £182m lawsuit

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Thumb Up

Seems to be 2 truths, 1 lie

Truth

It cost a packet

Truth

It caused a lot of erros

Lie

That's why so many customers left us.

I think people comparison shopping for lower utility prices *might* have had something to do with it.

Thumbs up for the start of someone drawing the line (like Sky) but *honestly* do you like *either* of them?

'Poo-powered' Volkswagen astounds world+dog

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Happy

@Jon Wilson

"aerobatic digestion" :->

Oops. Spell check is usually my friend. Yes that should have been anaerobic.

No actual prize however.

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Troll

@Peter Snow

Do not feed.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Coat

Don't poo poo the poo poo

The poo pooing alone is a court martial offense.

Mine will have a copy of the "Collected Writings of Lord General Melchett (Retd)" in the pocket.

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Vehicles. No. Put into the national gas grid, yes.

It's true this stuff will need sweetening (Sulphur compound reduction or elimination) but Denmark does it and as El Reg has reported before aerobatic digestion of meat and food waste (which the Water companies hardware *should* be able to cope with but presumably has never been tried) *could* meet 50% of the UK gas supply.

Running it in a car does seem kind of dumb but I doubt it will need *anything* like the 5000psi of Hydrogen tanks (although it might use the same design, giving a *very* high safety margin at the actual pressures sued).

BTW Methane is *odorless* the "Smell" is actually the trace amounts of Mercaptans (which are Sulphur compounds) added as a safety feature. Part of the point of this car *may* be to emphasize the pongless nature of the fuel.

Cautious thumbs up. Hope they do expand into waste processing.

Moon actually dryer than dem dry bones, say boffins

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Happy

The rocks are not a comprehensive survey of lunar geology

Just the stuff you could pick up in walking (or driving) range of the Apollo lunar modules.

This did *not* include *any* polar locations.

Or heavily shadowed craters.

So if you test rocks which aren't likely to have *any* water in to begin with found in locations which will cook out any that did exist over 1000s of years you should not be *too* surprised if you don't find any.

Just a thought.

Extreme porn law on the ropes

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Happy

@Jemma

"since all male cats have large spikes on their bits in order to drop the not too casual hint that its time for the female to ovulate... (and you thought him leaving the toilet seat up was bad...)"

Forgot about that bit of moggy physiology. The proportionately sized one on a tiger would probably eye watering.

"but it has NO place in what I choose to do sexually or with whom... "

It's been going on for a *long* time in the UK. You might like to look up details of "Operation Spanner," a raid by Yorkshire policemen of a *private* party involving a lot of (consensual) gay S&M. The current administration seem *slightly* more sensible in their attitudes.

"Ironic isn't it that the people who will probably kill this law stone dead "

It's *not* dead yet, the CPS have merely turned and run. They've not had to actually fight a case so of course they can claim "We have not lost a case on it. We decided to withdraw to save taxpayers money etc."

"old 'back to basics' fiasco when everywhere poor John Major looked a member of his party was either at it, denying he was at it, or found dead in the attempt to be at in in very curious waders with a orange shoved in his mouth/butt/dont ask *delete as applicable."

As it turned out he was also knobbing Edwina Currie at the time (according to her autobiography. No doubt the Spitting Image storyline of him having an unrequited passion for unwed single mother and front bench Minister Virgina Bottomley gave them both a good laugh).

"yet is deemed to be a-gendered and asexual until at 00:00 on their 16th birthday they suddenly get a sexuality & gender identity like someone installed a new ROM image.."

Not a view shared in the teaching profession, who are very well aware that some children have a *very* well developed understanding of sexuality substantially before 16 (to the point where such children are *never* seen alone by a member of staff).

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

@gonzo999

"In my (recent) personal experience its often the police that push these charges through at first, cajoling the CPS into saying yes to letting them charge (the police normally lay the charges at a police station initially). Then at some point (often depressingly far down the line and near to trial) the CPS actually read the paperwork and realise there isn't a case, so they quietly withdraw. "

Historically police officers in the UK were able to *mount* a prosecution on behalf of their forces. There was a perception that this lead to too many weak cases being tried which were a wast of court time (Sound familiar?)

Hence the setting up of the CPS

Doesn't look like the CPS has achieved one of its *stated* goals. Plod still managing to con-vince the CPS "He's a wrong un, and we got rock solid evidence that will bury him." The "Tony the tiger" video should have convinced them not to touch it with the dirty end of a long stick.

I think the title is optimistic. This law needs a few cases when some QC gets on their hind legs for the CPS and tries to sell it to a jury confronting a QC who knows what they are doing.

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Happy

@Paul 176

Salter was MP for Reading West. Despite a 4000+ majority he lost his seat in 2010.

He lost to Alok Sharma who took the seat with a 6000+ majority.

However you can bet he will be skulking about the constituency waiting for 2015 and/or the next prosecution under his deformed brain child.

Remember tthis would not have been possible without some fairly "sympathetic" civil servants.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Flame

You'd think these people did'nt have *real* crimes to prosecute

Oh wait *real* criminals tend to be able to afford real lawyers.

Who can convince a jury their clients are not guilty.

Wouldn't want to lower our success rates, would we?

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So when someone actually *contests* the CPS on this

If runs away, demonstrating they are being *prudent* with taxpayers money.

OTOH a more prudent use of the taxpayers money would be *not* bringing charges under stupid laws in the first place.

Thumbs up for the man keeping his nerve and not backing down. True freedom fighters come in many shapes and sizes (and degrees of reluctance). this one *should* be another for the scrap heap of redundant (in the sense that it' already covered elsewhere *if* needed anyway) and unworkable laws.

How much money did CPS spunk away on this case?*

*I think that is the proper legal term for the misapplication of taxpayer funds.

Elon Musk plans new Mars rockets bigger than Saturn Vs

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Happy

@Gene Cash

"I've seen the same thing promised literally 50 years ago. I even still have the wall posters. Not holding my breath any more."

A reasonable PoV. However back then it was mostly a flags and footprints PR.

What has changed are the number of possible destinations (ISS and the Biglow hotel project for starters) and the demonstration (by Virgin Galactic) of substantial public demand to do *something* in space backed by actual dollars on the table. ------

"Bending metal of that size is very difficult and expensive, it'll be a long time before a private company can afford that,"

Depends what you *mean* by private.

AFAIK most of the facilities to mfg Saturn and Apollo were either in private (corporate) hands or built with public funds with ownership retained by the contracting company.

There has been something of a revolution in mfg of large structures since Apollo. Waffle (square) machining into flat plates followed by break forming would probably be done by machining complete rings (as is done with the casings for large gas turbine nacelles) into isogrid (used on Delta IV and Falcon). Tank ends of 8 separate parts explosively formed and welded would now likely to spun formed in 1 part (Atlas and Falcon. Ariane uses shot peen forming). Lastly friction stir welding retains near parent metal strength and in principle eliminates the need for thickened plate edges. On the Shuttle ET this eliminated about 100 instances of re-welding. Fewer pieces also mean much fewer xray and dye testing.

Coupling CAD systems to CNC machines directly lowers both the manufacturing and design cycles of newer launchers. You might like to compare the staff size of SpaceX (which also produces its own engines) to produce a 2 stage launcher with that of the relevant divisions of Boeing or North American when they built the Saturn S1 and SIV stages

The US government may well not be able to build another human rated launcher. But after 5 decades why should they have to?

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Happy

@Dani Eder

"Now, the hydrogen doesn't care how it gets hot. You can get the same performance by focussing sunlight on a heat exchanger, and running the H2 through that instead of making a space nuclear reactor. "

Good point and IIRC Lockheed proposed it for one of the various NASA space tug programmes over the years.

I was never quite sure if the thrust levels they were expecting from solar thermal were ion drive levels or chemical rocket levels.

Obviously at chemical engine or nuclear levels things could move at quite a lick but you have the problem of a *very* large reflector to gather that sunlight while under acceleration.

While nuclear has no flight experience hardware did get built which was at (or near) flight weight which makes it more in line with SpaceX's preference for system with substantial development and near deployment history. While SpaceX seems to have investigated historical systems quite closely for future projects they have not slavishly copied them (EG the shift from solid escape rocket to liquid pusher for the dragon capsule) so what they come up might not be quite what people expect.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Proprietary? Ever tried second sourcing an RD 180?

Or perhaps an RL10. It's only been in production for roughly the last 50 years.

Shock news. Damm near *everything*in the space business of any size is "proprietary". Musk is just playing the game. So far he has played it pretty well.

Now where Lewis got the idea that a nuclear thermal rocket has a better thrust to weight ratio than conventional engines is harder to fathom.

By the end of the NERVA nuke rocket programme NASA IIRC was hoping for a flight design T/W of about 1.1:1. However once in *orbit* this will move stuff at a fair clip. Nukes score on chemical rockets on Specific impulse (c900-1000s Vs 450s+ for the best performing *safe* combo of H2/O2 and or 550s for the insanely dangerous Li/H2/F2 mix). Not very impressive with ion drives possible up to 30000, but with thrust levels giving decent acceleration IE a decent fraction of a g or more.

If he's going with a nuke in orbit it would make sense to do it as a "space tug" ferrying packages to and from Mars. Once this thing fires up it's going to be hot for the foreseeable future. It would make sense to keep using it as long as possible.

I think these plans are a bit premature but it does demonstrate a road map for future growth.

The article is right about one thing. The bleatings from the North Alabama Space Administration about job losses will be well coordinated and *very* loud.

It's been known for *decades* the real problem with lowering launch costs is the *huge* standing army of who don't actually *touch* the rocket but supervise and measure what, where and when something *has* been touched and fill in the (mostly) paper forms to confirm that it has indeed *been* touched, by a certified and properly supervised knob twiddler who was at all times properly supervised.

Defcon speaker calls IPv6 a 'security nightmare'

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Joke

2^48 was more than enough for Ethernet

Wasn't it?

Unpatched kernel-level vuln affects all Windows versions

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Coat

@copsewood

"You will minimise occurrence by improving programmer education and by maximising code peer review, in some cases helped using automated code analysis tools. "

It might help if you also point out that the *fastest* piece of software is the one that ignores whatever is input and finishes IE it does nothing useful but boy, does it do it *very* quickly.*

Response speed (which is *one* kind of performance. There are others) is *rarely* critical in the real world (most of Windows appears to be interpreted through the Common Language Environment).

However *when* it is it's usually linked to other issues like security, and reliability. Control systems for everything from machine tools and boilers (both of which, unlike cars and avionics don't AFAIK have specific development standards to work to) but could kill someone if their software was written by a halfwit spring to mind. Also low (or relatively) low level wrapper code (IIRC In Windows the DIB prefix means "Device Independent Bitmap")

So if you're training people to develop for the lower levels of mass market products (Windows OS) which *will* be attacked, or deeply embedded systems (which *might* be attacked and would probably hurt or kill someone if they go wrong) where "performance" *is* an issue and you're *not * instilling them a *deep* interest in things like testability, sanity checking input data and even (dare I even breath it) verifiability of their code their future employers should get ready for a whole lot of fail.

Even very experienced coders with deadlines to meet and insufficient time for peer review will create buffer overflows.

No doubt. They might find that writing a tool (well in principle I'd guess some C macros) that spits out outlines of functions in either a full parameter checking or a take-everything-at-face-value version might be a worthwhile investment.

Mine's the jacket with "Premature optimization is the root of most evil. DE Knuth" on it.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
FAIL

Systematic search of code paterns?

No company can keep *all* their developers active *all* the time.

Logic says there can't be *that* many *patterns* of code that have the profile that will give this failure.

Here's the point. Pick up the bugs (and this *is* a bug) in the *source* code not run loads of tricky (but ultimately ineffective, given they have found this for how many versions?) program exercisers, stress testers etc.

Hint. This is not *just* a bug in a function. It's a bug in your development *process*.

Speaking of which how long ago was that root and branch code review of Windows?

DfT 'unwittingly' bigged-up speed camera benefits

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Joke

AC@15:56

"The only time a police orifice will give you the benefit of the doubt is at the end of the shift when they want to knock off and get down the pub."

Unless they fancy a bit of O/T of course.

Evening all.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

@IDRIS FRANCIS

"In other words a £1,000 pa sign is broadly as effective as a £50,000 pa speed camera."

Now *that* is interesting. It also raises the question of what sensors they have to switch them on. It *suggests* that applied nationally they *could* raise the average national driving speed, possibly by several Kmh. For product deliveries over a whole country that would be quite significant (and produce fewer angry drivers).

However you can't collect revenue if people ignore the sign in the way you can with a camera.

UK ICT classes killing kids' interest in tech

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Happy

@Anomalous Cowturd

"if you took the time to train it. "

My comment lacked precision. I meant a proper, anybody speaks at it and it turns it into text in real time voice recognition system. But I will look up ViaVoice for reference

BTW OS/2 is still sort of available. It's called something like "eStation" and has a following among US local governments and some other businesses. They seem to like it's robust bug free nature.

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Also of the ARM architecture, and its asynchronous version

So he knows quite a bit about hardware design.

I think he's still a lecturer at Manchester. Which *might* be more relevant as he then knows what happens when you have to deal with the results from this curriculum.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

But remember what good teachers make.

A difference.

But then my CS teacher lent me a book on OS design when I was 16. Virtualisation and address translation techniques were pretty hard going but I've been sort of hooked on those brown Addison Wesley hardbacks ever since.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Big Brother

Is ICT meant to produce car mechanics or drivers?

It seems people are lamenting that ICT (WTF is that?) makes drivers. People who can use the technology but have little or *zero* understanding (or interest) in how it works. I quite like Orwell's term "Prolefeed."

Like the kiddies on a US school driving course (and remember in Merkinland roundabouts are unknown and the manual transmission is a strange and fearsome beast. Here be monsters!)

However *unlike* learning how to flow text around a table in Word Something-Point-Whatever driving a car is a skill which will *last*, because the interface does *not* change every 5minutes, or whatever MS's sales target happen to be.

Stop f*^king lying to children. If it's practical office skills fair enough.

If it's actual *development* skills then most of the kids won't make it and should be shuffled off to something else. Society *needs* both and they are *different*. And as others have pointed out the "C" in ICT does not seem to get a look in.

BTW The reason I can write long posts quickly is I *touch* type. A touch typing course came into my possession when I left school and it's proved a *very* worthwhile investment.

AFAIK *none* of the original Unix developers could, hence cc, dd, ed etc.

Anyone remember those "In 10 years *all* offices will be paperless" pronouncements?

Real time connected speech language recognition?

Still waiting.

The Great Beast's shag pad: Yours for €1.5m

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Happy

@Matthew Smith

Lembit Opik

Cheeky, cheeky.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Joke

The Great Beast.

Kenneth Clarke?

Conficker's 6m strong botnet confounds security probes

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Joke

6m PC's corrupted

Didn't realise the NHS had that many.

NHS trust axes 600 jobs, IT staff up for chop

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FAIL

Cutting staff while retaining efficiency.

Now that's a hard one.

Calls for *real* management skills.

Anyone think NHS "Senior executives" are up to *that* job?

UK.gov finally kills ContactPoint

John Smith 19 Gold badge
FAIL

Did it (would it) save *any* lives

The impression was that was what it was *supposed* to do, given Victoria Climbie was one of its initial justifications.

Let us just hope the *next* time someone gets the idea that some super-duper database is the answer the crisis de jour someone throws something (preferably something quite hard) at their head.

Let me write the *next* dead kid "Serious Case Review"

"There was a systemic failure by agencies to share information..."

"XXXX's death was preventable"

"Lessons have been learned"

And a few things that probably won't make it in.

"The social workers were more concerned about the effect a complaint would have on their career than weather the child was still alive."

"Making sure the paperwork looked right was *far* more important than actually checking on the well being of the child"

"Initial assessments are time consuming to do properly, although it is critical to deciding in how a case is handled. Still mostly no hard done."

"The threatening and aggressive behavior of the parents/relatives/family friends strongly suggested they had something to hide. But I was *really* scared of them."

I'm not sure what the definition of a "Serious Case Review" is given the average 7-10 deaths a week on the UK At-risk register. In principle shouldn't *all of them have one? I suspect it's along the line of "It made the TV news, we'd better look like we're doing something."

I won't mourn its passing. It *always* seemed to be more about a clean load for the NIR of the National ID card system and PNC II (fivein that the Police were to have access and record were to held till the "child" was 25).

Data bases don't save lives. Paid child protection and child welfare specialists doing their *job* should do that.

It seems to me that quite a few of them are not up to the task, and their managers are not up to the task of improving them, or getting rid of them.

Fail not so much for the DB, but the children who the *whole* system has systematically failed to the point of death, literally "Acceptable losses."

US appeals court bashes warrantless GPS tracking

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Police work should *only* be easy in a polic state.

When you think about this ruling from that perspective the answer should be obvious.

Essentially the FBI did it because they could.

It was less trouble. Less hassle. Less (no) due cause needed.

*Very* slowly the judiciary is waking up to the face *where* you are is a privacy issue as much as what you are doing.

Thumbs up. Unpopular (in this *context*) but there are *many* contexts. But this one *will* run.

Treasury considers Coins replacement

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Boffin

COINS is what reports governent project spending.

It's the source of those reports on *what* departments spend how *much* on *what* IT projects.

So yes its replacement which *should* promote even greater transparency on govt spending (particularly IT spending) on a *regular* (as opposed to one off) basis *does* matter.

It's the thing that *enables* the coalition to publish such information in the first place.

And El Reg to report it.

Caretaker faces jail for putting abuse images on boss's laptop

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OMG Innocent man claims to Police he is innocent.

They *investigate* his claim

And he is!

The *news* here is that the British police *did* investigate the claim and *were* sharp enough to realise he was innocent, instead of the usual "Well he would say that wouldn't he" routine.

Thumbs up to British police just this once *not* taking things at face value.

Carnivorous plague mice 'wiping out towns' in US Midwest

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Joke

Does not answer the *real* question

Which tastes better and what are the best herbs and spices to fry them with.

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Happy

@P Henry

"the good old Rodenator. "

The device that brought the benefits of Fuel Air Explosives to the masses.

For those who think this level of annoyance is *only* enjoyed by US citizens.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fePU5CIHpas

Terrafugia Transition flying car redesign - first analysis

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Still pretty impressive.

As design moves to production.

Remember there is *always* V 2.0.

Revolution lets R do stats on big data

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Stop

Open core?

Does anyone have an issue with this?

SPSS (Stats Package for the Social Sciences. Spreadsheet on mainframes for sociologists) takes me back quite a way.

OOXML and open clouds: Microsoft's lessons learned

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Joke

This will make Azure the "Roach motel" of cloud computing

Datesets get put in.

Dataset *never* leaves.

This standard ain't done till ETL won't run.

UK.gov smiles and nods at commentards

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Happy

Could a party get more than 50% of the first round vote?

And therefor not need to go to a 2nd round under AV

*Could* a party assemble a set of policies that appealed to more than 50% from the off instead of the roughly 33% winning UK parties seem to need right now.

It's an interesting question.

BTW Was this not a policy of the *last* administration?

I never bothered to look at either site but I think it would have been a good idea to put at the top "Don't bother posting if this is going to need new primary legislation"

DfT denies deliberately misleading on speed cam stats

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TVSRP still saying it saves > 40% of read deaths.

Lost £600k of their funding.

BTW Neil Barnes point is right. Smoking is roughly 121/100K of the population per year. At least 8.9x that of Alcohol and 22x that of cars. However it has taken the UK a *long* time to get here in terms of road deaths.

RFID chips snooped from 66 metres

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This Chrismas's Must Have Present.

RFID early warning receiver.

Possibly backed up by something to put out a response pulse powerful enough to blow out the front end of any snoopy receiver.

iRobot cops US Army droid order, aces Q2 results

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Happy

"Partnered with Boeing"

Boeing collects the checks and fills in most of the paperwork.

Lindsay Lohan released from screaming lesbian ordeal

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Happy

It *must* be true

The got most of it off El Reg.

Researchers: Arctic cooled to pre-industrial levels from 1950-1990

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Highly suspicious.

I'd thought the solar cycle ran in the range 9-11 years so 60 years would cover about 5 of them (very roughly).

One of the *other* issues of "Climategate" was the difficulty in getting research that did not seem to match the *consensus*. It's good that this seems to have been published *fairly* quickly after the fieldwork was done.

Thumbs up for this.

'External experts' replace Oracle on £13.2m Uni IT project

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AC@15:09

Apologies for the long delay.

"so they could at least show some progress in the original time specified and avoid admitting any form of outright failure."

And I suspect this is the *biggest* problem with some IT failures. The *total* unwillingness to admit (in *any* way, shape or form) that "We were wrong. It seemed a good idea but it wasn't. We take full responsibility").

The sub text is of course "We were gullible, did not do *our* research to work out what was actually *needed* and believed *every* word the con-tractors and con-sultants told us."

But no one would come near being *responsible* or *gullible* (and given the disconnect between how UK HE establishments work with the US environment it seems to have been designed for you'd have to have swallowed *every* word to think this would work without major changes).

This is not an implementation strategy, it's a face saving strategy. Maybe the next batch of students will fair better.

Aussie broadband is slower than a slow thing in a slow town

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Australian Federal Election August 21st.

19 days to go.

Can you guess what I'm going to say next?

UK.gov sticks to IE 6 cos it's more 'cost effective', innit

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Grenade

Do they even *know* how big the problem is?

All those depts, all those apps.

Others have suggested test new apps with new browser *only*. Deliberatley starve apps off IE6.

I go further.

Check *any* new browser against Acid3 or its replacement W3C compatibility test suite.

If the *browser* can't handle the standards, don't use it. *Most* of this seems to have come about due to MS *non* standard HTML keywords (or actually properties) and developers (or those who mange the development process) assuming they would be used by *everyone* forever.

Honestly what do *most* real government apps involve? Querying a database of numeric and alphanumeric fields (some of which seem to have trouble with lower case. YES, ALL THE NOTES READ LIKE THE LAST CIVIL SERVANT WHO FILLED THEM IN IS SHOUTING AT YOU).? Adding and updating same?

How fat a client, how complex a bespoke client will you *need* to access this? Most of this stuff really should have been screen scrapped from a dumb terminal emulation to begin with, *before* people had to start getting creative.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

@Wibble

You were winning in the first 3 paras. Then you went with Google docs.

iPads for hospitals: is this a good idea?

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Thumb Down

Buying the hardware should be the *last* concern

Seriously while iPads are expensive by netbook standards they will be *peanuts* to the price of the various ruggedised gadgets different vertical markets (FedEx, Field repair staff, even drinks machine service people)

It's the whole *system* that delivers benefits, and how well the back end uses its features.

Trouble is the iPad does not seem to have many built in peripherals to help in this market as standard.

*so* when you factor *all* those bits in (and of course their integration), and the deterioration in ability to be sterilized being stylish may turn out to be a *very* poor investment (dual internal mono speakers output through 3 narrow sound tubes. Can you say dirt and bacteria trap?) .

Marky hearts points are well made. I think the expression is "Management by exception." But to do so you don't want to substitute a human taking readings and putting them on a chart with tapping into a box, you want the human *out* of the loop entirely for routine data gathering.

BTW IMHO The UK NHS manages to kill a hell of a lot of people with misheard/misread/misapplied drugs every year. I'd expect *any* hospital laptop wotsit (whatever you want to call it) to have bar code reader (and possibly) RFID as *standard*.

I'd also prefer *no* personal data *ever* be kept on such a device, but that assumes adequate *secure* bandwidth *all* the time. More likely it would require something like Truecrypt, ideally with automated key management, using 2 factor (card + finger print or card + pin) authentication. At end of shift any unsent file updates are sent to the server and the personal files zeroed.

As a concept I believe these systems (with *whatever* terminal device you use) have *huge* potential to allow a smaller team to support the same sized patient population with *better* care than at present. The devils in the detail.

Amateurs buy hardware. Professionals buy *systems*.

Full disclosure. I worked on solid state heart recorders (black box for humans). They don't save your life but they make the coroners job easier.

Alleged expenses fiddlers to face justice

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Go

Under due process they are all *Alleged* unless found guilty

Please remember that.

Do *I* think they're innocent? What I think is my opinion. It's the jury's decision as to weather or not they *are*.

All joking aside this situation arose in the UK because MP did not have the *guts* to openly say "We believe we are worth more and here is the evidence to *prove* it."

Or how about an independent pay revue body (BTW when a BBC political programme had a group of the general public look at this,who were *very* hostile to the idea of am MP's pay rise they came round to scrapping expenses but *doubling* MP's pay).

Instead they decided to avoid that and just quietly (with *no* open debate) begin to raise the limits and forget any proof required.

They *made* this rod for their own backs.

It should be applied vigorously.

Proceed at flank speed to the court case.