Posts by Catweazle666

Accenture, Capita, IBM jump on £800m framework to make the NHS more agile as UK.gov announces further reforms

Re: Accenture?

Certainly are.

Started life as Andersen Associates of Enron fame, since rebadged.

Watt's next for batteries? It'll be more of the same, not longer life, because physics and chemistry are hard

Re: For an expendable battery, such as a lead-acid battery

Cyclon lead-acid batteries are still available, either as single cells or multiples, I have a 6v example on my vintage motorcycle.

The single D cell holds 4.5 amp-hours.

CEST la vie: HMRC admits controversial IR35 status checker returns undecided verdict in nearly 20% of cases

It wasn't written by Professor Neil "Pantsdown" Ferguson was it?

The nightmare is real: 'Excel formulas are the world's most widely used programming language,' says Microsoft

Re: Next August 29th...

See "spontaneous self-organisation in complex systems" for the problem with that.

Millions wiped off value of Capita outsourcing deal with English councils amid 'further contract variation agreement'

Brown envelopes?

Does my boom look big in this? New universe measurements bewilder boffins

So Finagle's constant (defined as the ratio between the number you expected and the number you actually got) has been found to be in error by 9%...

It's all total bollox anyway.

Smart Meter rollout delayed again. Cost us £11bn, eh?

Re: "The gravy train rolls on..."

Brown envelopes of course.

Blighty will have a whopping 24 F-35B jets by 2023 – MoD minister

A supersonic Harrier...

Just think, if we'd continued with the P1154 Mach 2 Hawker Harrier that was scrapped in 1964 despite work being in progress on the prototype's wings and fuselage and six engines constructed, we could have had an equally capable VSTOL aircraft half a century ago. Don't you just love politicians...

http://www.harrier.org.uk/history/history_p1154.htm

Tech titans demand free speech law to head off President Trump

Re: Wow

"Makes me think it may be bollocks." --- That's because it is, complete and utter. And antisemitic with it.

Google is the EU Remain campaign's secret weapon

Re: Hopefully Brexit...

Rubbish, you've been taken in by the propaganda. British industry - even after the destruction wrought to our steel and aluminium producers by the EU climate regulations BS - is still the sixth largest on Earth, particularly in pharmaceuticals, aerospace and armaments. Further, as to our engineering excellence, even Germany pays us to build their Formula one cars.

E-cigarettes help save lives, says Royal College of Physicians

No surprise there.

"Health officials who should have known better are also to blame."

Yes, it's amazing what a few strategically placed fat brown envelopes can do, isn't it?

Top rocket exec quits after telling the truth about SpaceX price war

@ Alister

You don't get out much, do you?

Coding is more important than Shakespeare, says VC living in self-contained universe

Yeah right...

History is bnuk - Henry Frod.

There's an epidemic of idiots who can't find power switches

Fun with UPS's

Sold a UPS to a small local company. A few days later, boss calls to say UPS has expired. Replaced UPS. A week later, that UPS expires too. And a week after that...

Boss gets over-excited, etc. etc.

Clue was, it always happened on the same day. A little research revealed that was the day the usual cleaner was off, and the boss vacuumed the office himself, plugging the vacuum cleaner into the spare socket on the power strip connected to the UPS that had the system box, monitor and printer plugged into it, because it was more accessible than the mains socket under the desk.

Oops!

Europe could be drowned in 'worthless pop culture' thanks to EU copyright plans

No surprise there

"this will rob Europe of its cultural diversity and benefit the lowest common denominator."

Which is exactly what the Eurofascist kleptocrats intend it to do, of course.

Bitcoin trade biz MyCoin goes dark, investors fear $387 MEEELLION lost

Bridges for sale!

"The idea is you buy a bunch of contracts for, say, $260,000 and get $400,000 back"

Yeah, right!

Incidentally, anyone want to buy a nice cheap bridge?

Fake antivirus scams: It's a $120m business – and alleged ringleaders have just been frozen

Re: So the companies might stop trading

Even more fun when you're running a Mac.

I find winding them up quite amusing actually!

Re: Finally!

My favourite is the phone calls from Asian gentlemen who inform you that they are from Micro$oft and that they have scanned your machine over the Internet and discovered it to be infected and a threat to civilisation as we know it etc. etc. When you string them along a bit, they tell you all sorts of things about what they have found in the registry etc, and tell you to click on the bottom of the bottom left of the screen. I have had quite a bit of fun with them before I finally get bored and tell them I'm running a Mac...

3D printed guns: This time it's for real! Oh, wait – no, still crap

Re: But against the backdrop of your British readership...

*"Those drawings are still around"*

Indeed they are, Google is your friend!

Re: But against the backdrop of your British readership...

Yet again the myth that we British have no guns.

Out in the British countryside we have plenty of legally held guns, mostly shotguns but quite a few rifles from .22 rat guns to scoped 30.06 Remingtons.

On top of that there are the historical re-enactment societies with any number of highly serviceable weapons from muskets to Springfield rifles, and there are plenty of antique handguns which are quite legal if the ammunition is *theoretically* unavailable, such as Broomhandle Mausers and Navy Colts.

As for the illegally held stuff, there are any amount, freely available if you know where to look.

Pixel mania: Apple 27-inch iMac with 5K Retina display

Re: Value for money?

<iYes, I get that 5 is a bigger number than 4."</i>

It's 5^2 ie 25 to 4^2 ie 16 actually.

A considerable difference.

SCREW YOU, Russia! NASA lobs $6.8bn at Boeing AND SpaceX to run space station taxis

"after Putin & Co cast their eyes towards Lebensraum in the Ukraine."

Er, that would be the EUSSR, which to the tune of €50 billion, financed a neo-Nazi uprising to overthrow the democratically government and install a EUSSR-friendly puppet regime, and has boasted that it foresees the time when its kleptofacsict writ runs "from the Atlantic to the Urals".

See HERE:

"EU should extend further into former Soviet Union, says David Cameron

Speaking in Kazakhstan, British PM says European Union should stretch from the Atlantic to the Urals"

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/01/eu-extend-soviet-union-david-cameron

The last time anyone said that, it was a little Austrian chap with a funny mustache, the upshot cost Mother Russia almost incalculable blood and treasure, so it's hardly surprising that Mr. Putin is more than a little defensive.

Want to buy a Woz-made Apple I? If you need to ask the price, you can't afford it

Re: "verified to be in working condition"

Somewhere in my vast collection of prehistoric electronic rubbish including crystal set radios I've got a 1977 Science of Cambridge MK14, complete with cassette interface. "Science of Cambridge" was of course Sinclair.

Much to my astonishment, it seems to have appreciated considerably over the past two or three decades.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-Sinclair-Science-of-Cambridge-MK14-computer-pre-ZX80-Jupiter-Ace-era-/230752400620

Looks like I'm going to have to start rooting about in my loft!

China building SUPERSONIC SUBMARINE that travels in a BUBBLE

Supercavitating torpedo technology...

Anyone remember the Kursk?

Lively stuff that hydrogen peroxide, especially in submarines.

Banning handheld phone use by drivers had NO effect on accident rate - study

No surprise there

That's because nobody takes a blind bit of notice of it.

CCL Computers probing source of fake virus-riddled dispatch mail

Amazon

I have never had this problem when dealing with CCL.

Amazon however is a different story altogether.

Nvidia unveils Titan Z: An 8TFLOPS off-the-shelf supercomputer disguised as a gfx card

Showing my age...

I wonder how many VAX MIPs that is.

Climate change will 'cause huge increase in murder, robbery and rape'

Pity there hasn't been any warming for somewhere between 17 and 23 years, depending on which database you use, isn't it?

Desperation seems to be setting in.

MPAA spots a Google Glass guy in cinema, calls HOMELAND SECURITY

Remarkable that a story about the possible pirating of intellectual property has degenerated into a competition to see who can slag off the USA most, isn't it?

Anybody would think the USA had never produced any of the technological benefits that the staggers-off were using to do the slagging, never mind the vast amount of other technological improvements the USA is responsible for. Mostly jealousy, I expect.

And to those who seem to believe that they have a right to invade other peoples' property and steal their possessions without any sort of retribution, well, I advise you not to try it in the more rural parts of the UK either, you would be astonished at the number of legally held rifles and shotguns about.

Revealed: How Microsoft DNS went titsup globally on Xbox One launch day

"Single point of failure"? Dear me.

It seems "software engineers" have a lot to learn about the concept of 'graceful degradation'.

Yahoo! staff! slapped! for! 'snubbing! own! webmail! and! preferring! Outlook!'

"Beyond the practical benefits of giving feedback to your colleagues on the Mail team"

75% of the staff refuse to use it. How much more feedback do they need?

Hitch climate tax to the actual climate, says top economist

That is assuming the warming - currently non-existent for the past 17 to 23 years depending which dataset we consult - is of anthropogenic origin and (a) linked to the logarithmically moderated of CO2 and (b) subject to necessary positive feedback from atmospheric water vapour - which currently id declining (Solomon et al), and coincidentally seems to have been doing so since ~1997, the start of the hotly debated "hiatus", is in fact due to "anthropogenic" causes, of course.

Which, given that throughout the above-referenced period has seen ongoing increase in both the concentration and rate of increase of atmospheric CO2 is becoming increasingly doubtful.

Mind you, a tiny detail like a tax being entirely unjustifiable has never stopped them imposing it before, of ciurse.

MPs demand UK rates revamp after Google's 'extraordinary tax mismatch'

HMRC lacks 'common sense'

The entire British administration from the Prime Minister through the (un)Civil (not)Service down to the most junior clerk, including - in fact especially - Local Government and sundry para-Governmental organisations such as Crapita and its offshoots plus various debt collection agencies and other sub-contractors lack 'common sense'.

It would seem the possession of this otherwise valuable property is a total bar to obtaining employment in any of the above groups.