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Posts by Rich 11 4440 posts • joined 8 Jul 2009
I got lumbered with updating a Fortran software suite which had originally been written by a Portuguese placement student, more because I'd done more work with Fortran than anyone else rather than because I knew the field (although the updates required were functionally comparatively simple). He'd effectively written everything in Portuguese except the menu prompts and error messages, so you can imagine what it was like trying to make sense of all those variable and function names abbreviated to fit Fortran's six-character limit, even with sensible and consistent comments.
Fortunately there was a Portuguese-English dictionary in the library and with a bit of guesswork from what I could remember of schoolboy French and Latin, I got the job done in three weeks. Then as I was demonstrating the end results to the department who owned it, a lecturer popped up and corrected one of my translation explanations. She'd been away for the previous month buying a house in Portugal and teaching an evening class in computing at a local college, in preparation for a phased retirement in the sun. I think my expression gave away my feelings; I was lucky I was so stunned I couldn't even swear.
The 2006 HERA job assessment and salary scale restructuring was supposed to put an end to that, but it was an uphill struggle to get professional qualifications and technical knowledge to be assessed more favourably than any other non-management non-specialist desk job (I think the finance and the library people saw the same issues as did IT and the other technical specialisms). It was almost like the assessment criteria had been written by management consultants who had failed to consult...
It ended up in a lot of local agreements recognising and resolving the problem, some of which I can well imagine hard-pressed universities have walked back on in recent years.
You're talking shite.
I recently retired after decades of working in IT at a university. It wasn't even a particularly large or famous one, but things were never run as unprofessionally or as incompetently as you claim. If you have a specific institution in mind, name it. If you don't, then stop making such broad unevidenced claims.
And we were fucking buried under SLAs.
Then if the actual owners of the shell companies want to come forward they can unfreeze their assets.
You've missed the entire point of the shell companies. The lawyers are hired by the shell companies and paid by them, not by the oligarch. Shell companies hide true ownership. The oligarch never has to poke his head above the parapet.
Everything owned by an Oligarch
Setting aside the fact that most of these properties were already -- on paper at least -- owned by shell companies through a convoluted network of onshore and offshore shell companies, Boris publicly signalled two days ago that it was time for the oligarchs to add an extra layer of complexity to their holdings and to recruit more lawyers ready to gum up the works and ward off any attempt at seizure.
Assuming there are few or no nuclear conflicts in the next few months, I think it's safe to say that the Tory hierarchy will be auctioning off many more offers to play tennis with oligarch's wives this summer. Expect the bidding to be heated.
"The people", being literally everyone
I don't think that populist governments do listen to everyone, or even pretend to, which is why they just do what they want to do regardless. Populism isn't about numbers of people but about who shouts the loudest, about who dominates the argument rather than about who speaks the most sense. It's appeasement of the mob, except these days the mob is defined by who gets the most airtime rather than who occupies the most streets. In fact it gets uncomfortably close to rule by media baron.
Talking of which, I see that dear Rupert has been let out of the doghouse. Now he can once more speak directly to his editors rather than merely issue a tweet each morning and wait for the high priests to interpret his delphic 280 characters.
Populist governments do like to attack their own justice system, if they're not able to replace the judges with their own placemen.
Why is it that 'populist' always seems to equate with authoritarian and repressive? Perhaps people who vote for politicians who promise simplistic, short-sighted solutions to complex long-term problems are kept happy just as long as they see people whom they don't like have their rights and recourses restricted slightly more than their own rights and recourses are curtailed.
Would it not follow that "government secret service agencies" deserve to be wiped off the face of the Earth?
That would depend who they target and who they allow to be harmed in pursuit of legitimate national defence. If they do more harm than good then they are in need of a leadership and cultural change. A rogue security service whose actions reflect badly on a government by harming their own population should be brought to heel, although we all know of governments who can't control their agencies and of governments who don't care what happens to the people they claim to serve. For them, the revolution can't come soon enough...
The rumours of a mini reshuffle (now that the adults are in charge) quieted the more ambitious and integrity-free MPs who were looking for an excuse to ignore the noise from their constituency parties. One more news cycle, one more dead cat on the table, and they'll all be wiping their brows in relief and putting it all behind them. Then they'll be free to get back to the most important task of government, handing over money to the wealthy.
But there's a middle ground where the rate of expansion exceeds gravity's ability to bring all matter together, and where my favoured iron atom doesn't end up in a black hole. Also you forget that Hawking radiation consists of particles which themselves don't end up (given expansion) annihilating with a suitable anti-particle or getting dragged into another black hole.
A lot of what you experienced is the result of good practice at a local level that the IT supports by enforcing good practice
It is, and that's why I took umbrage at Doctor Syntax's piece of cynical ignorance, "Those looked after by paper-based trusts ATM are probably the lucky ones.". No-one thinks the broader NHS doesn't have problems, but most of those arise from the fractured structure imposed by politicians who think markets solve everything, and they are the blind ideologues and architects of disorder I hold in utter contempt.
Or probably not. I was in hospital just three days ago, an event which involved going from A&E to Radiology, back to A&E for treatment, then to Radiology for verification, and finally back to A&E for monitoring and discharge. At every stage either the department receptionist, a department nurse, the radiographer or the A&E doctor checked me in or checked my details on their computers. They knew they had the right record for the person in front of them because they asked a confirmation question such as my postcode, and if I hadn't been capable of giving that or my name they could have looked at my wristband. Compare that with the last time I was at A&E, fifteen years ago for a near-identical injury: then I had to carry several forms around with me at a time (and eventually a prescription), which quickly got disordered and crumpled, and the only things which were shared electronically were the x-rays.
The Green* in Boston, Lincs was tarmaced over in 1962 and turned into a car park / Wednesday market space. So that would make the colour Boston Green quite similar to your van's grauweiss.
* It's the westernmost part of Wide Bargate, if any tourist passing through wants to sightsee. It's still referred to as the Green, just as Bargate is still used although the medieval town gate is long gone.
as I wake up from my brandy-induced chair-nap in Mission Control
As long as you're only drinking Tesco's Own Brand rather than something decent, the trick is to mix it with Coke Zero so that the adverse effects broadly kick in 20% later. That gives you plenty of time and a sufficient retained degree of manual dexterity to text the activation code to the Serbian hitman once your suspicions have been confirmed.
Neither am I the Son of God blessed with great wisdom
In fairness I don't think the Son of God frequently expressed much in the way of wisdom. Cursing a fig tree for not growing figs out of season isn't very wise. No wonder each of the gospel authors felt the need to present it differently, to try to write some sense into it.
Why would you ever want to do an ldap lookup as part of your log message template?
So that the sales droids can impress the pointy-headed buyers. "Look at how we enable logging customisation with all these cool features. As you know, big data is the lifeblood of the modern organisation and we let you gather the information that one of your code monkeys can mine for trends and that you can use to show the CTO how much you deserve a bonus. Thank you. Sign right here."
dinosaurs are formed from Greek and Latin stems
And there was me thinking they were a clade of archeosaurs.
Anyway, if their names can have any plural form, I submit that the plural of brontosaurus is brontopodes. Surely the '-us' is all that needs to be taken into account.
Quod erat, er whatever!
That would be 'quod erant...'
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