Posts by AndrewB57 39 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jul 2009
Thank you for this post. Far better informed than much up-thread.
Folk don't seem to understand how a 21st C high school runs.
The main MIS integrates student, staff and room timetables, attendance (registration), year groups, pastoral groups, subjects, finance, salaries, assessment, qualifications
Schemes of work and lesson plans will all be computerised. Many, probably most, resources will be held virtually
Catering, trips, cleaning and caretaking will all be managed on computers.
In this case I would guess the main MIS is penetrated and that there is, therefore, evidence that all systems could be at risk as the MIS has least external contact.
Yes, I agree, many schools do not have adequate disaster recovery plans and as a fellow school Governor you will be aware of the debate - every pound spent on x is a pound that cannot be spend on education, but I am wondering what is happening here.
Has the school taken the view that keeping children learning off-site (as with the pandemic) is worth it for a few days. Perhaps the MIS cannot be accessed and registers printed until the vulnerability is identified.
Cast your minds back to Win3.11,thick ethernet, a Novell.3.12 swerver with a MacSpace
All of these are irrelevant in this tale except for the users' ability to change colours
I had a colleague who came to me crying
"Andy, Andy I've done a silly thing"
"I'm Andrew, what have you done?"
"I have made my screen white writing on a white background and now I can't change it back"
I miss Win.ini
IMO we are undertaking a change in mode of transport equivalent to the introduction of ICE with many equivalent issues: capital expense of new tech, comparative underdevelopment of new tech by comparison with existing, unavailability of "fuel" distribution points.
The difference being that this will be a smaller change but effecting larger numbers AND we have a massively enhanced ability to drive both tech and industrial production forward.
While overall power generation is an issue, it can be overstated - it is reasonable to assume that the very greater part of charging will take place overnight. At that time we are ALREADY in danger of having over-capacity from renewables taken with other power sources, leading to a need to load-shed Soaking up over-generation will make our grids more efficient.
While we (UK) ae building 'massive' nuclear power stations (Sizewell C anyway) the technology exists to build Small Modular Reactors which, apparently, take only 5 years to build/commission. Of course this requires political will, which may be in short supply.
I DO think that distribution is a larger issue. If there is to be significant urban uptake then there will need to be a great deal of thought, and investment in infrastructure at a local, even domestic level. I am unaware of this taking place on any scale yet.
The other part of distribution that concerns me is that of the grid itself both above and below ground. While I think that generation issues can be solved through some large scale decisions, the enhancement of the network will be a series of difficult choices - new pylons, large scale buried cables. Essentially we are replacing our existing refineries, storage depots, fleet of tankers and fuel stations with 'something else'. Some can be direct replacements (substations on petrol forecourt sites, power grid running up and down motorways) but much will have to be new.
Again, I am not aware of any of the necessary debate taking place (except very loud objections to a new run of pylons across Suffolk).
I believe we will overcome a lot of this, but there will be many bumps on the road (!)
The reason corporate entities spring for paid-for kit is not just that you can ring up and get "support", it is so that someone else warrants the fitness of the item concerned.
Most businesses cannot afford to rely on in-house s/w checking - why should they if they are a hospital, or an airport? They should be doing due diligence on suppliers and then relying on THEIR resources to guard against nasties (and to fix sh1t when it goes wrong).
yeahbut nahbut
In a lottery you lose the cash invested, the rate of return depends on the number of other tickets purchased, the security of both depends on the business running the lottery.
With Chia the value invested in HDD depreciates as with the resale value of the HDD, the rate of return depends on the amount of disk space allocated by other users, the security of value is er nil
With UK premium bonds the value of the investment is maintained in cash terms (depreciates by inflation), the return per bond is at a set, known, rate and the entire setup is guaranteed by HMG
Also income is tax free.
They're not very alike.
There IS a piece of work underway, supported by the Gates Foundation, to support vaccine tracking through the use of 'quantum dot technology' within the vaccine does.
This research is being undertaken by one of the foremost institutions in the States, MIT, and has the potential to be highly valuable in low-income, low tech settings.
It is worth being aware of when discussing with anti-vaxxers so that they do not surprise you with "evidence"
https://news.mit.edu/2019/storing-vaccine-history-skin-1218
FWIW the underlying piece of info from which this conspiracy grew is a project to store some medical information onboard following vaccination.
"researchers developed a new type of copper-based quantum dots, which emit light in the near-infrared spectrum. The dots are only about 4 nanometers in diameter, but they are encapsulated in biocompatible microparticles that form spheres about 20 microns in diameter. This encapsulation allows the dye to remain in place, under the skin, after being injected."
A fantastic project which has triggered the technophobes everywhere
https://news.mit.edu/2019/storing-vaccine-history-skin-1218
Surprised not to see mention of the shareware prog we bought back in the ?early 90s - AsEasyAs
And why AsEasyAs? well Lotus-123 geddit?
I taught myself the back end from the Manuel (written in West Coast geekese as I recall) and wrote a macro that took the csv output from our invoice runs, data in our product files and table for salesforce ("force" ha, haha, oh god) and calculated gross and net profit (an anaylsis missing from our otherwise handy dbase app).
We shared this out on a monthly basis leading to the classic observation that "1/8th of fork all is fork all"
"I don't get that bit. Why? It's present and spreading in countries where their winter temperatures are higher than our best summer temperatures. I'm guessing there must be some wholly counter-intuitive reason for it bit I can't for the life me work out what it is."
Because when it is cold, windy and wet we shut our windows and spend more time indoors. We take the bus to work rather than walk or bike.
The dispersal of virus vectors outside is very significant but in the still air of a sealed home or office.....
As some other wise person has said, it WILL spread until a very high proportion of the population have had it. The only thing, ultimately, that can stop that happening will be an effective vaccine with significant uptake. Until then all we can do is slow the spread to the point where our economy can support our medical service to treat the casualties.
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