Posts by moonrakin 55 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Nov 2012
One can see why farmers prefer to take a bung from solar companies who are actually "banks in disguise" harvesting the subsidies....
The RPA have been making CAP payments illegally for some time due to their hopeless admin - last time I looked about 2 years ago there was £28 billion in payments that the EU could legally demand be repaid to Brussels....
I'm well aware of Gmail account numbers
The leaks of DNC emails did huge damage in he 2016 election and the provenance of the leaks has not really been elaborated while people chew through the content.
As it turns out Google didn't have much to do with it
Try GitHub
As far as your last paragraph is concerned - up yours you tosspot.
Off topic ... but ...
This seems like a place to punt the question.
Did Google run an organisation wide Gmail service for the Democratic Party in the 2016 US election - or was it just John Podesta that just happened to have a Gmail account?
Since 2007?
not much
I bet the clipboard wielding box tickers at MCA went into a tailspin... an awful lot of their boxes don't have a "Not Applicable" option.
However if ASV Global think it was a little stressy with the Shipping Register and the MCA - they're in for a shock when the Egyptian Authorities demand a Suez Pilot Cabin stocked with whisky and porn videos.
maybe it's OT .... maybe not
Three Mobile is touted as a UK company - anybody trying to deal with them beyond the retail stores finds out quite quickly that it is essentially an Indian operation these days
Lloyds had some Indian outsourcing that ended badly some years back... now they seem to have had a bout of corporate amnesia (Alzheimers?)
If it sounds too good to be true...
There are simply far too many variables in this - the adjustments required are so tortured to deal with real world physical processes that any "measurement" will simply not be trustworthy and will require physical validation.... - imho it's BS on a stick.
It's a fishing expedition for funding using the BS baffles tactic.
which translates to the enterprise being driven by S&M (*Sales & Marketing)
Expectation management dominates the customer experience.
This is partly as a result of the move into the mainstream mass market - but it gets to be self defeating when coders and interface architects try to cater for users who couldn't run a bath unsupervised.
There's an adage "Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig."
Phones and laptops are increasingly consumer devices and with the rise of "AI" they are going to get even more obfuscated / dumbed down- leaving the demanding user little choice but to replace the OS as supplied with something that is usable for the tasks they need to perform....
Easily verified ?
pull the other one...
http://climateaudit.org/2010/12/26/nasa-giss-adjusting-the-adjustments/
Hansen was a disgrace and Gavin is trying hard.
I'd stick with bad poetry - there are plenty in the polar research community that view much of the alarmist claims with contempt - albeit tempered with a dollop of practicality about feeding their families and doing what they love. The price of even mild scepticism is vindictive vilification and worse - which is simply appalling.
why not go the whole hog and overlay Mauna Loa CO2? and while you are at it some error bars and some indication of changes/adjustments to the underlying data sets over the period plotted.
woodfortrees eh? not exactly an authoritative resource.
What part of "we don't know" is it that you are struggling with?
which proves you can copy n paste - poetry still challenging though eh?
Unlike I suspect many here I have worked in the Arctic and am well acquainted with the variability of ice up there and I'm pretty ticked with folk who should know better pouncing on individual seasons to promote loopy hypotheses in both camps when the straightforward answer is "we don't know". The reference to OCO-2 is another"we don't know" thing regarding the actual observed effects of CO2 - the observations to date most certainly diverge grossly from models that claim to be skillful and on which this balloons / mirrors / sea spray daftness is based on.
Sweating the assets and resisting change instead of embracing enhancements to the system?
Phone companies?
Whodah thought eh?
I remember back in the 80's a certain BT boss at an exhibition seeing some early web stuff and getting incensed that several web pages could be opened at the same time at no extra cost to the punter....
Old habits die hard.
Autonomous general purpose self driving cars real soon ?
Tesla's latest heavily hyped effort - oops
That said 'Blighty has a leader in the field - who are recruiting tech types....
Metal cutlery ...?
Iberia
Air France
SAS
and several others have no problem with metal cutlery in coach... being a long haul peon don't know about up front - but suspect 1st class NEVER have plastic cutlery....
Now if they put USB power/charging on all seats ....
The true shame of it is that Gavin & Co can't resist adjusting the surface station data ..... you know about that do you?
In terms of BS - the non-appearance of data from the OCO2 CO2 and photosynthesis mapper is right up there - we get more data from Pluto than something that's buzzing overhead 15 times or so a day... producing data that is inconvenient.....
I'd like to see how many sales , marketing and PR persons UKMO employs - they seem to be obsessed with making grandiose, tub thumping forever ratcheting upwards claims about weather and demanding more powerful computers.
I've had it with naming a bit of rain and wind - like it's something special and unparalled or weirdy wevvah - the parade of meejah BS blaming anything and everything on global warming and by inference 'oomans is just fantastical trash.
Well - it's not unreasonable to expect that taxes be spent responsibly.
I don't think that any of your 3 examples can be held up as presently being unalloyed success stories by any stretch of the imagination.
Rather than twiddling encryption ... perhaps the much thornier problem of how to restrain dysfunctional bureaucracies and get them doing what it says on the tin might be addressed.
It's not like the BBC is alone in the wasteful, venal and wonky world of our present public "services" is it?
heh - nope ... but air travel is seriously over-rated as a experience - I say that as somebody who' gets 100K +++ miles a year in sometimes.
I've long argued that broken or structurally inadequate software is no different in principle to a failed mechanical part and should attract the same level of attention - this doesn't happen in general.... Although some folk get it - an awful lot - including far too many developers dont :-(
I worked for a short time doing support for a Merkan corporate - the number of bugs was astonishing and the main strategy for dealing with them was dissembling and denial.... Things are improving - but then you get the A400M FADEC fiasco...... anybody there have Chinook FADEC on their cv I wonder?
Personally - I'd reward any and every bug found in a piece of software with T-shirts + mugs - up to serious amounts of money - Google have already cottoned to this iirc?
yep ... OK... and if you go look - the Dutch (+ Belgians...) generally endeavor to be open and transparent about it. This is categorically not the case for the EA.
My personal climate views aside - I expect the data and the analysis to be published alongside the plan. That the EA seek to evade scrutiny likes this immediately raises the suspicion that the case for what they plan to build and spend is not evidenced and robust. As one section is titled "No medals for the wrong decision" - anybody with half a brain would take that as mandating a strong analytical basis and transparency - that has NOT been the case with TE2100 + The EA.
Really - it's not exactly like they've no prior for wasting monstrous amounts of public money on misconceived and miserably executed schemes while sloshing piles of dosh at their chums is it?
BTW - the facility in the article was overseen by the altogether more competent and honest National Rivers Authority (the clue is in the name) which predates the EA.
Thanks for the article - appreciated.
Anorak point - in "Muddy Bottom" section I rather suspect 1,100 volts should read 11kV - it being a standard distribution voltage.... never seen 1,100 volts.
Slightly jarring note there on climate change. The Environment Agency's enthusiasm for Climate Change does not extend to exposing the design constraints for the TE2100 project - a matter about which they are notably reticent - well actually silent - the numbers being reputedly based on UKMO UKCP09 which has - to put it mildly - been criticised as a work of imaginative fiction (see HERE)
I've zero problem with robust evidence being used to justify enormous public works - in fact for something like the TE2100 project I'd say it's an obvious core requirement. The fact of the matter is that the EA has been deliberately withholding the technical case document (it exists and is referenced multiple times....) for this project for several years......
They wouldn't be bigging up and boondoggling something so important with their mates would they ? nah..... Entirely happy to be proved wrong in this - I'd shut up if there was evidence - say from the array of mm accurate water level recorders that festoon the Thames estuary f'rinstance....
argh!!!
some time back the Danes were feeding their porkers on fish paste / rendered marine slop - recall olfactory double take while grilling breakfast - hmmmm .... thought I got pig and not herring out of the freezer.
I'm sure this concoction / culinary masterpiece is just wunnerful but can probably wait indefinitely to verify that .....
In principle the BBC / PSB /should/ be a good thing - but it lost its way some considerable time ago.... Head of BBC a banker, head of C4 a banker.... substitute a w for a b and you've summed up the management.
It's difficult in light of the facts to view Public Service Broadcasting as anything but bloated dysfunctional bureaucracy with all the attendant chronic problems that are consequent from that.
Some beeboids might see the reduction in viewers and worry - but even more simply aren't interested - how else would/could you explain the monstrous vanity, monumental hubris, slovenliness and towering self regard - all suffused with right-on prosthletising that 'pon occasion simply beggars belief?
At the rate they're going - the funeral is going to precede the centenary - and that ... on balance, imho - is something of a just reward.
Too big to fail? - we'll see.
If the taxi regulators were almost anything else but lazy venal self serving bureaucratic gits they'd root out the thieving git operators - but no - they're not going to do that. Where I am in the UK they license too many vehicles so there is considerable pressure on the drivers to gouge the customers and next to no actual competition.
Residual sympathy for the plight of the working man in the traditional taxi system has all but evaporated - really - it's gone too far and now resembles officially sanctioned banditry.
Uber would allow a competitive market to operate where at present there isn't one and abuse of the customers is endemic.
Simple shallow opportunism from Cable - an election is not far off. Shame he's not so voluble about the other IT catastrophes that litter the gubmint IT landscape.- like wasting billions on duff/fraudulent software projects in the NHS hasn't ended a few lives prematurely? AIUI there is quite a high failure rate on the traffic controller courses - shame we can't test politicians likewise.
The balance between features and maturity / stability / capacity must drive NATS and I know that the safety critical aspect of ATC is taken very seriously and that the sequencing of graceful control degradation is something that considerable effort is expended on. It's not Candy Crush.
Again... if you a re curious about the run-up to Iraq - "Fiasco" exhaustively details the walk-outs of pretty much the entire cadre of senior American military with relevant ME expertise in the run up to the Iraq invasion - and some rather jaw dropping abject stupidity by the unelected "SPADs" stateside...
As for UK involvement - perhaps it might be interesting to pursue this by maybe finding a guest reviewer with relevant experience like erm... say Tim Collins.
I'd go along with not getting involved up to a certain level - but tactical assistance to the Kurds and Iraqis to get ISIS of their backs looks increasingly like a reasonable move - occupation ... No Way José
Last time I looked the rough metric was plant every cultivable part of the planet with the best energy source vegetable (or whatever) and you would provide 20% of the energy used from fossil fuel - of course things would improve - since the consequently reducing population would have less demand for energy - there you go - sorted.
I sympathize with FTDI - being a regular consumer / integrator of USB<>Serial stuff , chip fakery is a real PITA since the assholes regularly make devices that don't work properly when pushed - "they" even fake the Prolific cheapo USB serial chips......
I'd put a bounty on the vendors and importers with a free FTDI chipped replacement part for every scrote dobbed in.
CE = "China Export" ;-/
Even the Chinese are pissed orf with non working fakes.
I pay a premium that I'm entirely happy with for FTDI parts - because they work very well - as opposed to Prolific parts which are so compromised by fakes that using one is like Russian roulette with 5 bullets.
String 'em up - ditto for the importers / resellers of fake flash memory.
As somebody who's had to use the ICO over the last four years - I can tell you that they've been changing the way they operate of late.
I think the volume of requests has been ratcheting up and they are hitting the "resource constraints" and they're getting significant flack from on high....
The upshot is that less experienced junior staff are dealing with enquiries and one gets the feeling that there is an element of deflection and taking the side of the subject of a complaint (particularly if a government department) at the start - rather than do a little 'scoping of a complaint..
An FoI will likely not help. What will get them hopping around is an MP's letter.
.
Well, it's either Biggles or William Earl Johns spooling up in their coffins.
The RAF comes over more as a 21st century parochial local council replete with an overstuffing of pompous managerialist types than an elite fighting force.
Which actually, to my mind is a shame.
One thing that's notable about the General Atomics vehicles is that they built them without seemingly much formal input from the defence establishment.
Surprised that "they" (MoD) haven't proposed modifying the Nimrods for unmanned operation - you read first here folks.
Having watched the output of the UK's renewables over the last week ... just how big might the batteries need to be?
The "if it doesn't look right" adage has pinned the credibility meter to zero - I see no mention of how many elves in hamster wheels are going to be required. It's clear that these modelers definitely started out with the required answer and worked backwards.
The Obamah administration has already hosed billions down the toilet on now bankrupt renewable crony state capitalism (Soylyndra et al, ethanol etc., etc.) and the Americam system has been spectacularly prone to scams - The Whiskey Ring, Teapot Dome, erm Soylyndra .....
The only thing renewable here is the credulousness of the average greenie and the sticky fingered-ness of researchers who will - sadly - say anything for money.
This lot aren't related to renowned solar research Professor Craig Grimes are they?
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2012/11/ex-psu_prof_craig_grimes_sente.html
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