* Posts by Lieutenant Frost

7 publicly visible posts • joined 16 May 2011

'It's full of beer!' Miracle fridge reveals itself to pals tuckered out from cleaning flooded cabin

Lieutenant Frost
Pint

Re: Since when...

"What's wrong with your countrymen up north though - they drink the same stuff sheltering in the lee of a bar in winter, don't they?"

In my neck of the woods, you'll often see beers like these showing up on the taps of local pubs during the colder months of the year.

Though I will submit that almost any beer is good beer when it's free beer. I have found precious few exceptions to this rule.

Dawn of The Planet of the Phablets in 2019 will see off smartphones

Lieutenant Frost
Windows

Re: I fought them and I lost

"Like many here i thought larger phones (ugh, phablets) were daft.

Then along came the note 2 and i've not looked back since."

Same thing here. Went from a Samsung Odyssey ATIV running WinPho8 to a Galaxy Note 4. It represented a jump from 4.0" to a 5.7" display.

I walked into the phone shop and my exact words to the sales rep were "Give me the largest phone you have." At the time, I had to choose between the Note 4 and the Note 4 Edge. The price differential couldn't justify the Edge, so I went with the base Note 4. I still use it as a backup phablet to this day, albeit with the Next lock screen installed (the one feature I still miss in Android - WinPho-style lock screen calendar integration).

So despite all the cash ploughed into big data, no one knows how to make it profitable

Lieutenant Frost
Headmaster

Re: "abundant data by itself solves nothing."

I work for a company that deals in data mining of clinical systems. Basically, depending on what data you have (and what data you're willing to export to our system [and drop the $$ for accordingly]), you'll be able to write queries against the data which may be from completely independent systems that would allow you to connect dots that you would not normally be able to see in each disparate system on it's own. In theory, it sounds cool - and when it works correctly, it is.

- HOWEVER -

This requires quite a few dots to be connected internally before such queries can be written:

(i) The source system(s) must be capable of providing data to our systems (i.e. Hello, IoT) - Your systems have to be producing data for us to slurp up in the first place, be it the hospital EMR, heart/blood pressure/oxygen/etc monitors, barcode scanners, and so on.

(ii) The source system(s) must be administered by people who are empowered to affect change in the organization - If your hospital's IT department can't get the C-suite to approve a simple maintenance contract for your critical literally-life-or-death systems, good luck getting them to agree to the cost or effort required in setting up an effective "big data" measure.

(iii) The source system(s) must have users who can be considered subject-matter experts (SMEs) on how the systems work and what the data contained in them ~means~ - These are the people who are going to be able to validate that the data is moving from the source systems into the data mining solution correctly. This is where the experience part of the existing systems and user workflow comes into play.

(iv) The source system(s) must be capable of providing the data to be analyzed - If you don't tell me when a patient enters or leaves a hospital, I can't tell you how many people came and went through admissions in a month. Sadly, this may be the most straightforward of the points being made.

(v) The destination system must be capable of handling the data in a meaningful way - Let's face it, most of the data hoovered up by these big data systems is useless noise, loosely structured at best. Those familiar with healthcare systems will have at least heard of the HL7 standard, which suffers from the same level of bloat that all standards tend towards - systems that are built to handle HL7 messages are unwieldy, disgusting monsters by nature due to how loosely the data is structured. Put simply - the destination system has to know how to interpret the garbage being fire-hosed at it in a way that provides some level of value.

So assuming you have technical requirements (i) - (v) met, you now have more problems:

(a) Unless you know what you're looking for, all that data is useless - If you've ever needed an example of the phrase "the more you know, the less clear things become", then this situation fits perfectly. You need to bring the aforementioned SMEs together at this step to interpret the data being collected, and build a data model that can actually provide some level of value for the people who are footing the bill for the project. If they can't, then the project needs to be shelved and re-evaluated, because reaching this point without a clear idea of whether the data collection put in place will do what the big data system was brought in for is a huge red flag, and the objectives need to be re-evaluated.

(b) Likewise, the culture around the system should be collecting ONLY what is useful, and discarding the rest - extraneous data that is collected only increases the chances of false positives and the signal/nose ratio in general. Demographics is an example - you may care about whether a subset of the population has a particular affinity for dill vs. sweet pickles, but odds are you won't. Don't collected that if it's meaningless -now-, even if it *might* be useful later.

(c) The people receiving the reports filled with these data points need to care - As was (once again) mentioned before, the people who are getting the output of these projects need to have some level of buy-in into the systems. There needs to be a clear picture drawn by the results of a big data project on how it will impact the organization, otherwise they'll just shrug their shoulders and all the work was for naught.

At the end of the day, these systems need to be connected to actual delivered value (i.e. increase in the bottom-line) in order to be considered anywhere near a success (and thusly justifying the expense) where it counts. Getting all these ducks in a row in an ideal scenario is unlikely enough, once you roll the theory out to reality, it's easy to see why big data projects aren't really taking off or providing value the way the market has promised it would.

iOS 7 SPANKS Samsung's Android in user-experience rating

Lieutenant Frost
Windows

Eh. WinPho 7.10 works for me. Speaking as someone who has run a Nokia E71x and an original iPhone, I can't complain about the WinPho layout all that much. In my two-plus years owning this phone, only a few complaints come to mind:

1) App store availability. Given the state of MS in the mobile marketplace, it's understandable that nobody has developed apps for the platform. Not entirely sure what to make of it at this point in the game.

2) Occasional lockups on the lock screen: I'll have to occasionally reboot the phone at the lock screen. Not a huge deal, rebooting takes less than a minute, but still annoying when you're not expecting it.

3) Listening to fandroids/fanbois talk shit: I don't care about your phone platform. I can't complain about WinPho because I'm not a typical phone user, I guess. I didn't have a cell phone until 2004, didn't have a smartphone until 2007. To this day, unless the platform is missing Facebook/Twitter, I don't think I'd notice all that much.

Windows Server 8 plays catch-up with VMware and Unix

Lieutenant Frost
Windows

Correct me if I'm wrong...

But I think what Microsoft is going for here (regarding the GUI/no GUI thing) is the admin tools are installed on the admin's workstation, and they remotely administer their servers from there. No more connecting via Remote Desktop to get at what you should be able to (in theory) do from anywhere that the appropriate utilities are installed.

I'm just a lowly code monkey so I have no idea for sure, but this is the impression that I'm getting from what I've seen with SCSM/SCOM/etc.

Ballmer reprises 'developers, developers, developers' chant

Lieutenant Frost
WTF?

Umm...Steve?

"...and claiming that Windows 8 is capable of running code two decades old..."

Just a heads-up: the use-case of ANYONE who is still running applications built for Windows 3.x in TYOOL 2011? They're not your customers. They are people who refuse to move past tech that is now 20+ years old. These are NOT people who will pay you for future versions unless their arms are twisted enough that they come off, and even then it's questionable. Do everyone else a favor and leave these anchors behind; drop the compatibility with pre-NT systems already and move Microsoft into a slightly less despicable era where ~real~ progress can be made.

Thankyouverymuch.

Google and Microsoft in trading places shocker

Lieutenant Frost
Coat

"masterful spin by a...marketing specialist"

I'd hardly call Microsoft's marking division a "specialist" group...