Posts by AndyD 8-)₹ 95 posts • joined 14 Nov 2016
https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero/5-myths-about-electric-vehicles-busted
"the most demand for electricity we’ve had in recent years in the UK was for 62GW in 2002...... Even if the impossible happened and we all switched to EVs overnight, we think demand would only increase by around 10 per cent."
So do your own 'Sums' : 30 - 40 million cars; 3 or 7 or 17 kWatt charging load .....
... let me say that again - thirty years ago I wrote a report for a major bank, outlining the risks and drawbacks of using spreadsheets for almost anything!
This was a bank that had very rigorous very very thorough, very s l o w, but almost completely foolproof in-house software development procedures. My reportt was received 'politely'.
A few short months later they made swingeing redundancies across the IT department and brought in newer, faster fashionable techniques.
Hey Ho
"herd immunity" approach the government initially backed as a way to explain why it didn't need to go into a national lockdown. That policy was also well-reasoned and well-explained by a small number of very competent doctors and scientists who just happened to be XXwrongXX right, but obviously it is politically quite unpalatable.
... gives me the same access as being in the office, so where is the big tech goldmine?
Where it's always been: FUD - my last employer had an experienced team quite capable of supporting SSH but no - it had to be a CD with a Known Name on it for me to take home. I was tempted to set up a reverse SSH tunnel to spite them but a) BOFH would notice, and b) I was so chuffed at working from home I didn't want to rock the boat!
well I travel around a bit and use several devices. Having had a couple of NAS's fail on me I see imap gmail (free!) as very convenient storage (I archive every year or so - time passes quicker with age).
Google have already decided what I'm going to think next week so security is not a problem <g>.
"In 2004, the council worked with Capgemini to implement SAP R/3 to run finance, HR and payroll" see above.
So now the options are £2 million for a hardware upgrade, and ongoing software costs a bit more than before ..
OR £40 million for all the current buzzphrase gaga stuff that sure as hell won't match current work practices - just like the SAP dinosaur shit didn't.
Anyone noticed a strong smell of brown-paper envelopes?
"we had a disassembler" ... iirc everyone with an early PC had a disassembler it was 'built in', which I think is how Peter Norton was able to rapidly bring out his invaluable PC-DOS Users' Guide (with the disassembled DOS/BASIC bios source code in the Appendix).
"I had a refrigerator using pentane for years. Being flammable in a well designed fully sealed system is not a problem."
but when there is a problem it burns very very hot, somewhat similar to acetylene - and as recent history shows this can be disastrous. Organic halides otoh are mostly extinguishers of fires.
"...or who even have a clue what Fitt's Law is?"
hah! pointing devices - that's when it all went wrong -
computer systems and interaction with same worked fine when output was read and input was typed. UPPER CASE ONLY even helped a bit with the typing (only slightly joking)
""You also don't need to have a qualification of any sort"
Yes I came up against that - 'did you wire this (fused spur)'?
Yes
You just have to be a "competent" person to do that.
I've re-wired three houses and none have caught fire.
But have you got any qualifications?
'A' level Physics
That's not what I mean
So it doesn't count?
Dunno!
<q>I know you jest, but oxidized copper wire can result in complex crystals known as black death
I hadn't heard of this one before...got any links? Sounds like old school telephone stuff which I have a bit of interest in myself --</q>
... and as anyone who has 'inadvertently' re-routed their POTS connection will know, it's carried (for miles) on copper-plated steel wires.
"Any metalwork teacher worth their salt could churn out sensible quantities of handguns on a small lathe or mill. This isn't magic knowledge. It's not hard once you've sorted out a pattern."
hmmm.. Google shed80 (not from home obviously)
" Unix's signed 32-bit integer time rollover in 2038, sometimes called Y2k38" -
everyone, including Google, seems to have forgotten the IBM 360 date rollover - either Y2K or Y2K28 depending how crafty you were. When bytes were rarer than hens' teeth, IBM Assembler code used 16 bit date fields - 7 bits yy and 9 bits ddd (1900 start assumed).
I didn't make that up , honest.
Well having cut my programming teeth back in 1966 - I also instinctively dislike the hierarchical mess that backs .net applications, or even the 'runtimes' for VB et al - but it seems these pale into insignificance compared with the massive meshwork of unseen often redundant, error prone and possibly malware seeded 'scriptware' that backs up current web application.
... Oh and horses don't pull carts, they 'draw' = push them. <g>
Only we also gave Germany plenty of support to rebuild
No, that was America. And the UK received more in post-war Marshall aid than did Germany. Not a lot of people know that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan
and to what extent did that compensate for the cost of re-paying Lend-Lease?
regardless of who delivered the software and who spec'd it, if software controls the plane some (or all) of the time there MUST be a big button that says "Full Pilot Control" - and delivers just that!
p.s. I am very happy that I have never written software that could be a risk to life or limb. Like most programmers, the very worst I might do would only cost my employers money.
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