Posts by Dr? 44 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Nov 2012
"who do you think owns all those US T-bills that financed the F-35 and all the rest of it?"
It's more than a little debatable whether, on its own, China selling down US treasury bonds would create any financial problems for the US. The amount China owns amounts to little more than a days trading volume and there's still plenty of demand from outside of China to invest in US debt.
I've just started working on my first agile project. I'm a tester. I can see how it could work but I can also see the huge problems that could arise from a lack of specifications, a lack of documentation, a lack of issue tracking, a business that hasn't thought about exactly what it wants delivering and developers who think they know best. Not to mention "digital" who come in late in the day with big ideas but not a clue about the business, its customers or an idea about how their grand ideas can actually be implemented into something that is almost finished.
I'm no climate change sceptic or expert (I'm probably best described as climate change confused) but I didn't think that the holes in the ozone layer had anything to do with global warming. Instead I thought the main problem was higher levels of UV rays reaching earth, increasing the risk of skin cancer and killing stuff like plankton and some other crops. In fact I'm sure that I read a while back that perversely, the banning of CFCs and the like will actually increase global warming because the holes it created in the ozone layer allowed heat created by C02 emissions to escape.
Someone feel free to correct/agree/abuse me.
I'm not sure about lasting longer. I've still got my HTC Desire which is just shy of four years old now, a few months younger than the 3Gs. The battery still holds very good charge as a phone (about a day) and I can easily replace it myself if I wish. They still go for about £70 on fleabay (granted I'm sure this is less than a similar age iPhone). As for recycling, I did it myself. I removed the SIM rooted it and removed all of the phone software, reskinned the OS and made it into an MP3 player. If I turn off wifi and bluetooth I can get a couple of days battery life minimum out of it which makes it a pretty decent MP3 (as well as any other digital file format you can think of) player for taking on long journeys. And it has a micro SD card slot so I upgraded the storage. I'm not disputing that the iPhones are pretty well built pieces of kit, but they're by no means the only one.
Surely they're killing the alpha male and that would result in weaker offspring. That doesn't seem a good thing for the long term future of the species.
They'd probably be better sticking a rubber stopper on it's horn so it doesn't dish out killer blows. Bet they wouldn't get as many bidders to carry out that task...
The £13 billion is for what was called disability living allowance. It is incapacity benefit, at a cost of £5bn that is paid to those who are unemployed due to disability (or other physical/mental problems) and so this amount that if anything that would be used to cover unemployment.
The living allowance covers the cost of mobility and care for disabled people. Considering that a mobility allowance is paid to those who are blind and that there are 2 million blind people in the UK, it is quite conceivable that 1 in 20 may need to claim some form of disability benefit.
UK Government does have a history of not perusing full payment of illegal tax evasion by large companies. Vodafone were let off paying only a fraction of what they owed after they breached tax rules following the purchase of a German Engineering firm. The British press in the same case showed they were not too bothered in reporting either the tax evasion nor the HMRC's lack of efforts in pursue payment. This maybe because the owners of certain British Newspapers are also involved in tax avoidance which may or may not be legal (The Barclay Brothers prop. Daily Telegraph and The Spectator, GMG owners of The Guardian, Northern Shell owners of The Daily Express and a few porno mags and channels.).
I have no idea whether the Google's tax arrangements are legal or not. But I wouldn't suggest judging it just on the actions of HMRC and the reporting of newspapers.
My missus works on the Connecting For Health project, putting medical records online. She just confirmed that yeah, most NHS PCs run XP. And worse, NHS trusts all deal with their IT separately meaning there will be no bloody chance all PCs will be switched in the next 6 months.
All of our medical records accessible from unpatched Windows PCs....
"Well it did take you 2 years to summon up the courage to join in after a German U-boat attacked your ship and killed 128 people..."
Not entirely sure if this was aimed at me, but I am English. And regardless of the challenges the US troops bought with them, they certainly helped bring World War 2 to a speedier conclusion that would otherwise have been possible.
I'm not saying that at all. I don't think that military intervention will fix a thing. Just because another power won't try stop us from intervening in Syria (which isn't quite true anyway because Russia will do their damnedest) doesn't mean that any intervention will be useful.
I'm struggling to think of one useful intervention in a war since World War 2. Perhaps you can tell me otherwise?
Syria is an interesting comparison.
How can a distinction made between reports of chemical weapons being used against civilians and reports of a mother being made to drown their new born child (along with a myriad other atrocities against the civilian population)?
Each are as morally reprehensible as the other. Yet we will go to war in Syria and stand by idly in North Korea.
This article and the one over at the Auntie are in fact wrong. A quick check on the OED website shows that the last update was back in June and although it includes "headfuck" and "smeg", it does not include "twerk" or "selfie". Anyone with a UK library card can log on and do a quick search to confirm this.
Both articles are mixing up OED with Oxford Dictionaries Online.
Epic also had a revision in the June edition of the OED. Fitting, as this article is an epic fail.
I know of this place only because it was the set of a dreadful film called S.N.U.B. (Secret Nuclear Underground Bunker). The only reason I watched this straight to video garbage is because my old boss (think a fat, bald version of David Brent with neither the wit or charm) was in it. He was some zombie type thing and he got repeatedly shot and smashed over the head. Who wouldn't want to see that happen to their cretinous boss?
But yet here you are not saying a word about the great apps on an iPhone but slagging off users of Android.
For the record, I love my Android phone because of the endless opportunities to customise it, the brilliant PowerAmp app and being able to drag and drop data to the phone.
If you wanted content in a convenient way, why would you get it through the horror show that is iTunes? I only have it installed to copy the odd album onto my wife's iPod but even this fleeting interaction cements it as the worst piece of software installed on my machine... this was true even when I had my fleeting dalliance with Windows Vista.
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