Posts by DaveLS

Breaking the nerd internet: Three overlapping generations of tech history – in one selfie

Re: Cutler is right....

Liam Proven> "The real story is that DEC squandered $billions on VAX9000 and nearly died."

Indeed; arguably it did kill them, slowly. The VAX9000 —the long-awaited vector VAX— had the wrong target market with the wrong implementation at the wrong time. DEC saw its traditional market in science and engineering being eaten by so-called "Unix hot-boxes" —the likes of Convex and Alliant with vector and parallel processing that was comparatively easy to use— while the big-money commercial customers could buy an IBM 3090VF for mainframe capabilities and the option of vector processing. Having abandoned the mainframe market when it dropped the DECsystem-10 (nee PDP-10), DEC no doubt felt they were missing a lucrative trick. The implementation was wrong because they chose ECL-logic when the smart money was on VLSI CMOS. Even when their own people came-up with a single chip that could compete with their 9000, Olsen couldn't believe it was possible. The time was wrong because it took them 4-5 years to deliver something, by which time the science and engineering types had already made the jump from VMS to Unix, and by then also had the additional choice of a growing number of fast, relatively cheap RISC-based systems. At the high end... well no one got fired for buying IBM.

I've heard that DEC ultimately sold a total of about 50 VAX9000s; by the time it launched, Convex and Alliant had sold several hundred machines. Seeing that microprocessors were the way forward, Convex adopted H-P's PA-RISC, and the company was eventually bought by H-P, whereupon the Convex developments became the basis of H-P's lucrative Superdome line. Alliant also switched to a microprocessor, but fatally picked the doomed Intel i860.

Liam proven> "Ken Olsen always said UNIX was snake oil, backed up by Cutler. They had valid points."

To be fair to Olsen, I understand his "snake oil" point was that Unix wasn't a standard that allowed software to run on any Unix machine —unlike VMS where executables could generally be moved from one to another. He was right, but I'm not sure that anyone making the leap thought that anyway. A recompile might be enough for standard Fortran or C, and many of the architectures in the mid-late 1980s were novel enough that some tuning of code was necessary for optimal performance (sometimes as little as changing a few custom compiler directives). System calls, particularly ioctls for things like tape and terminal I/O sometimes had to be tweaked, but overall, porting between different flavours of Unix was easier than porting to or from VMS, if working at a low level.

Re: Cutler is right....

Unix didn't win against DEC VAX and VMS simply because of Unix's presence in universities. DEC, with PDPs and later VAX running VMS, had a strong presence in university research labs for science and engineering. But through the 1980s DEC fell behind on performance and price, and VMS, while a fine operating system in many respects, lost out to Unix because Unix provided portability across the latest fast hardware from many vendors (most of them no longer around) —as well as a fast cacheing filesystem useful for some data-intensive applications.

Cutler was justifiably dissatisfied with DEC dropping their novel hardware and OS projects; I have no doubt that they could have continued to this day producing desirable hardware and software. But they dropped the ball, and it's understandable if he felt skunnered. They picked-up a little with their Alpha systems, but by then it was too late for them to regain their former glory.

Nvidia part of plans for mega 1.4 GW AI datacenter near Paris

Alternatively, why not build the data centres close to the power plants and run some fibres into Paris and Marseille? Several hundred Tbit/s and latency ~10 ms wouldn't be difficult to implement (cheaper than chunky wires or urban nukes), and the users wouldn't notice — unless some PHB insists on "physical presence in t'data factory". Even then, some might like to move to work outside the cities.

Time to make C the COBOL of this century

Re: C is the new COBOL

The Indomitable Gall wrote: "You certainly can't write for a SIMD architecture in C"

Assertion failed!

We had vectorizing C compilers (along with FORTRAN) 40 years ago. SIMD was a thing when CPUs were at least the size of a fridge, long before it arrived on microprocessors.

Undergrad thought he had mastered Unix in weeks. Then he discovered rm -rf

Re: Slap on the wrist?

User permission management on Unix and other commonly-used operating systems (e.g., VMS) was around long before the 1990s, and didn't allow group writes by default unless local managers changed it. My recollection goes back to the early '80s for VMS and the mid '80s for BSD 4.2 Unix.

Unix system vendors, including Sun, had plenty of experience of internet-connected systems in the US and elsewhere, years before JANET even switched to IP in the 1990s.

It's about time Intel, AMD dropped x86 games and turned to the real threat

Reaper X7 wrote:

"...There's a reason they call x86 a CISC and it's because it can do complex integer set computing. It can perform complex mathematical and algebraic equations and calculations to run programs and applications with extreme precision and efficiency. RISC is called Reduced Instruction Set Computing for a reason. It's NOT meant to process high level mathematics or operate with efficiency. It's a low power part for basic instruction sets for small form factor devices..."

Is this some kind of joke? RISC vs CISC has nothing to do with performing "complex mathematical and algebraic equations and calculations to run programs and applications with extreme precision and efficiency." or "high level mathematics". If it was, we'd still be using the original VAX-11/780 ISA, with polynomials in hardware.

And I don't recall IBM Regatta (Power), Sun Starfire (SPARC) or H-P Superdome (PA-RISC) being examples of "small form factor devices"

A closer look at Intel and AMD's different approaches to gluing together CPUs

Every computing system is a set of compromises held together by bottlenecks.

NHS would be hit by 'significant' costs if UK loses EU data status, warn Lords

Re: For the love of god

Some people who "won" the referendum are still trying to win the argument.

SuperHTML is here to rescue you from syntax errors, and it's FOSS

Re: would like to see a switch back to plain old static HTML

Nearly thirty years ago I used Perl and the CGI.pm module to generate web pages on the fly from plain text content provided by people who didn’t know HTML. It was fine insofar as it went (internal access, limited audience) but probably not a good idea for wider public use nowadays, given the likely vulnerabilities and load on the server.

You're right not to rush into running AMD, Intel's new manycore monster CPUs

Re: Missing the point

Higher clock speeds don't help if you have to wait microseconds for results to be exchanged between parts of a large computation running on separate servers linked by, say, Infiniband. Some classes of large engineering and scientific simulations benefit from the lower-latency (tens to hundreds of nanoseconds) communication within a single many-core system.

Arm security defense shattered by speculative execution 95% of the time

No doubt the authors of the paper notified ARM well ahead of publication. This is a common courtesy in security, to provide some opportunity for mitigation before knowledge of the issue becomes public and widely available for exploitation.

Boeing's Starliner makes it into orbit at long last – with human crew aboard

"Does anybody do the most basic of research before commenting, you know like the identity of the crew?"

I know who the crew are, and even though I'm only a physicist, I also know a little bit of basic biology.

Really? Did one of them undergo major surgery?

Twitter 'supersharers' of fake news tend to be older Republican women

Re: Cesspit

Did you get lost looking for alt. something or other — or perhaps slashdot?

Re: Cesspit

>"Don't forget the US was rather late to WW2"

And what do you think was the reason for that?

Re: Cesspit

You have to ignore history to believe that the Nazis were socialists.

The Reg builds official Lego Artemis and Milky Way sets

Lego alternatives

Lego spacecraft models?

In my day it was Ray Malmstrom's "Eagle Book of Spacecraft Models" — https://www.amazon.co.uk/Eagle-Spacecraft-Models-Inside-Tomorrows/dp/B001373QMI — together with assorted blocks and sheets of balsa wood, plywood, fretsaws, glue, sandpaper, paint, dope (don't sniff), etc., —and Jetex rocket motors. OK, the Jetex motors removed the need for a lot of the skill and creativity of building your own rocket engines, but one could have fun augmenting their thrust by boring holes in the solid fuel pellets (slowly, in order not to ignite them) to increase the surface area and hence burn rate.

Lead (to make weights for balancing the flying models) came from melting-down the little lead seals that used to accumulate in the bottom of the electricity meter enclosure after the meter man called to empty the coins, clipping-off the seals and replacing them in the process.

Life was just a breeze in those days.

Did IBM make a $6.4B blunder by buying HashiCorp?

"And on the same lines, with Oracle yet again, there's OpenOffice and LibreOffice."

That was a case of closed source being released into the open, not an open source product being acquired. Oracle inherited OpenOffice from Sun. Sun had acquired the German company Star Division —creator of StarOffice— in 1999, and released Star Office, together with its source, forming the original source code base of OpenOffice and LibreOffice.

Ford pulls the plug on EV strategy as losses pile up

Re: The UK used to be a part of the EU

@codejunky

"Thats fine but the graphic and text seems to leave out the UK from what I could see (I might have missed it)."

You certainly have "missed it"; perhaps if you had bothered to read the paper, or even merely glanced at the figures and tables, you would have seen that in all cases where data are presented by country (Table 4 and Figures 11, 12, 13 and 16), the United Kingdom is included (not "UK").

"The only reference being the literature section mentioning a link to leeds Unite union."

You found the reference to the "UK" there because among the literature cited there is a link to the EU UNITE project (https://www.its.leeds.ac.uk/projects/unite) at Leeds University — nothing to do with the Unite union. I guess that instead of bothering to read anything beyond an offending title, you simply searched for a few triggers like "co2" and "uk" (which found the link) before responding with:

"Given a quick look it does seem to be biased nonsense which looks heavily at exaggerating the bad while ignoring the absolute necessity. If its the one John Robson was referring to, I dont see where it bothers with the UK only the EU and the MMCC co2 costs would be a write off in my opinion due to the problems with that theory."

Really. You wrote that on the basis of...??? No, don't bother.

The UK used to be a part of the EU

@codejunky:

"Given a quick look it does seem to be biased nonsense which looks heavily at exaggerating the bad while ignoring the absolute necessity. If its the one John Robson was referring to, I dont see where it bothers with the UK only the EU..."

It's from 2012, when the UK was a part of the EU. The UK coverage is essentially the same as France, Spain, Italy etc. Some (like Germany) get more mentions in footnotes, others fewer.

"Given a quick look it does seem to be biased nonsense...co2 costs would be a write off in my opinion... ...I stopped reading this pretty early on in the summery"

Clearly, no further comment needed, or maybe just "Hmm" as you might say.

Re: It's the cost that gets you in the end

This shouldn't be seen as a comprehensive list of studies, merely some things I've come across:

Dresden (Becker group) 2012 study:

https://www.greens-efa.eu/legacy/fileadmin/dam/Documents/Studies/Costs_of_cars/The_true_costs_of_cars_EN.pdf

See also the more recent Gössling et al (2022) study:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800921003943#s0005

Also this on company cars:

https://www.transportenvironment.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/2020_10_Company_cars_briefing.pdf

When red flags are just office decoration: Edinburgh Uni's Oracle IT disaster

The DEMO Project

This is from a mid-1980s fortune cookie file that came with a BSD Unix (~4.2) distribution:

In the beginning was the DEMO Project. And the Project was without form. And darkness was upon the staff members thereof. So they spake unto their Division Head, saying, "It is a crock of shit, and it stinks."

And the Division Head spake unto his Department Head, saying, "It is a crock of excrement and none may abide the odor thereof."

Now, the Department Head spake unto his Directorate Head, saying, "It is a container of excrement, and is very strong, such that none may abide before it."

And it came to pass that the Directorate Head spake unto the Assistant Technical Director, saying, "It is a vessel of fertilizer and none may abide by its strength."

And the assistant Technical Director spake thus unto the Technical Director, saying, "It containeth that which aids growth and it is very strong."

And, Lo, the Technical Director spake then unto the Captain, saying, "The powerful new Project will help promote the growth of the Laboratories."

And the Captain looked down upon the Project, and He saw that it was Good!

David Mills, the internet's Father Time, dies at 85

Vale, Prof David L. Mills

His achievements are monumental; may his family, friends and colleagues take comfort and pride in those achievements and the gratitude of the many who appreciate them.

Can solar power be beamed down from space? Yes. Is it commercially viable? Not yet

I should add that the earth's orbital eccentricity varies over a long period (>~100,000 years, as part of one of the Milankovitch cycles), and it's currently at the low end, so there have been —and will again be— times when your 20% is correct (maybe nearer 25%), but many millennia away.

While I generally agree with your points, the variation in insolation due to orbital eccentricity isn't as large as 20%. At perihelion (which currently occurs in northern hemisphere winter), insolation is about 6.9% higher than at aphelion. This can be seen from the ratio of distances and the inverse square law: (152.1Gm / 147.1Gm)² ≈ 1.069

Eben Upton on Sinclair, Acorn, and the Raspberry Pi

I find it a bit of a shocker, too. My 1970 edition of the Guiness Book of Records listed the ICL 1900 as the most powerful British computer, and the CDC 7600 as the world's most powerful. Twelve years later, as a PhD student, I was submitting jobs to a CDC 7600 in the University of Manchester Regional Computing Centre via an ICL 1906A front-end. The longevity of those things seems incredible now.

Ofcom proposes ban on UK telcos making 'inflation-linked' price hikes mid-contract

Re: Hey, there's an idea...

It's certainly complicated by modern financial instruments and practices, and there is —arguably inadequate— state regulation of the creation of money by banks. Nevertheless, banks create around 80% of money in the UK economy, according to the Bank of England. See, for example: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/explainers/how-is-money-created

and for more detail: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-bulletin/2014/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy

Intel's PC chip ship is sinking with Arm-ada on the horizon

Re: The Old Instruction Set Computer

They've already tried that several times: iAPX-432 (early 1980s); i860 (1989-early 90s) and Itanic (early 2000s). Great ideas in every one of them, and all fatally flawed.

Now you mention it, perhaps they're overdue for another attempt — although the last one took an awfully long time to die. RISC-V might be their best bet, if they don't want to give in to ARM.

UK govt wants standalone 5G by 2030 but won't shell out to help hit target

Re: Would you ignore the referendum?

@codejunky

Congratulations! You had me convinced all the way along until that last response —and even then I thought, for a few moments, that I was conversing with a bona fide swivel-eyed loon! I think the constant proof-by-assertion was starting to wear thin, and finally the accusations of "mental gymnastics" and "UK supremacist" broke the spell. But you have the chippy neoracist persona off to a tee! You should think about a stage show.

Re: Would you ignore the referendum?

@codejunky

"This is a discussion I have had many times..."

You can discuss all you like, but my point still stands: there was nothing about the UK's EU membership that prevented it doing what it did with vaccines in 2020. You are unable to cite anything about EU law or regulation from which the UK was "freed". On the matter of fast access to vaccines, the UK —or rather the UK Vaccine Taskforce led by Kate Bingham— played a blinder. On other related issues —like access to PPE— the UK did much worse.

"there is no conceivable belief that the UK would do the absolute opposite of every member"

So now you have a feeling that, as a member, the UK would simply go along with the rest. You refuse to consider the possibility that Britain, as an EU member, might have brought the others on side with the UK plan. This possibility was a reality in the past and Britain was valued across the EU because of its sometimes apparently contrary views.

"But not those of the remain side? You cannot complain about the persons on one side without considering those on the other side. So XFactor voting on the people isnt a good way for policy decisions."

Who said I didn't consider the motives and potential pecuniary benefits for anyone on the remain side? You really are desperate to use this "XFactor" straw man thing; perhaps you gain comfort from thinking that your views are based on "substance" and "absolute fact", while those of others who differ can be dismissed because they are merely based on "style", "feelings" or some other wooly-minded air-headedness.

"Why do you say I value greatly?"

Because you said:

"Now for the sting- we didnt leave based on 1 referendum. We also subsequently had general elections and an MEP election where leave won consistently. Even against parties offering to abandon the referendum result completely and instantly the electorate supported leave."

and:

"Not only did people willingly vote a majority to leave in a directly asked referendum, but then we has the MEP elections of participation in the EU system where people overwhelmingly supported leave while rejecting the directly opposing remain party. Then in the General Elections the parties (not just the Corbyn repulsion effect) offering remain were rejected and the party offering brexit supported strongly."

You tried to used these additional votes to demonstrate that I'm wrong. I've merely done due diligence and checked the numbers. On the basis of those numbers and your own criterion of simple numerical majority, you are wrong. You might also like to know that the result for the 2019 EU parliamentary election (the one you call the "MEP election") was similar, with a small majority of the vote for remain/2nd-referendum parties.

But remember, I'm here because I don't believe we can infer that small numerical majorities necessarily tell us very much about the wishes of the electorate in respect of EU membership, whereas you seem to cling to them with the zealous belief that they represent "absolute fact" for deciding on EU membership.

"I point out that leave has won the referendum, GE's and MEP election. It's you who still wont accept reality."

So here you've backed away from "majority" and used "won". We all know that leave "won" —and I've certainly never denied it— but this thread of discussion started because I effectively questioned whether a majority of the UK electorate in 2016 really wanted to leave the EU. You responded with the assertion that the numerical majority (ignoring the 28% that didn't vote) was enough to close the matter.

"Erm, so you need to add together parties committed to remain AND those who wanted a second referendum?

What's wrong with that? Some remainers were happy to simply ignore the referendum —after all, it was advertised as non-binding— while others thought that the only way to stop Brexit was to hold another referendum, and both were vehemently opposed by the leavers.

Why not just say you compare leave vs 'everyone else'?

That's effectively what I did, and the numbers add up to 48% for the leave parties, 52% for the rest.

"And yet the leave party had the majority and made the government."

Now you've switched back to "majority", but that's in parliamentary seats. The Conservatives took about 43.6% of the vote in 2019; adding the votes for Brexit/UKIP plus various Ulster Unionists takes the total to about 48%. The leave parties took a minority of the votes but won a majority of parliamentary seats —and, with that, the power to govern. Including their "oven-ready" Brexit deal.

Re: Would you ignore the referendum?

@codejunky

I said "The claim about Covid vaccines ... was debunked long ago." You said:

"Erm, no it hasnt. In fact even the priests of the EU publicly stated the shame that brexit britain was better organised than the EU. The only ones who believe it debunked are delusional fools who have never managed to explain how."

Perhaps you'd care to explain: what was it about membership of the EU that would have prevented the UK from doing what it did in 2020? But my point still stands: the claim was debunked; nothing was done by the UK that could not have been done while the UK was an EU member state.

"And again if its the person not the argument that pushes you over then you are basing it on image instead of the substance of the argument, and you ignored the distasteful people supporting remain. As I said there are people on both sides we can dislike, that is why it's the policy action that matters and that is all I based my views on, not the people."

I consider the professional lives (outside of politics but undoubtedly entangled) of the persons I mentioned to be substantial and pertinent. I considered that there was a common thread that motivated them to oppose the regulatory regime of the EU in relation to taxation and other financial matters. Arguably, their pecuniary interests in leaving the EU were not beneficial to the rest of the country. That's not an "Xfactor" style consideration. You can put your Aunt Sally back in the cupboard.

Returning to that all-important subject of votes and majorities, you said:

"The system we used in a democracy is asking the electorate."

And on the subject of the 2019 General Election:

"Then in the General Elections the parties (not just the Corbyn repulsion effect) offering remain were rejected and the party offering brexit supported strongly."

OK, perhaps you'd like to consider what you said more carefully about that most recent ballot in 2019 —one that you appear to value greatly to backup the 2016 referendum. Go away and add-up the votes for the parties that committed to leave versus those that committed to remain and/or offer a second referendum. You might be unpleasantly surprised.

Spoiler alert: In the 2019 General election the vote split was about 48% for leave versus 52% for remain/2nd-referendum.

Re: Would you ignore the referendum?

I suspect that many of the "whining nationalists" (as you call them) would be happy to pay their share of the national debt while leaving — so long as they get their share of past oil revenues. That may also be true for other neglected regions of the UK whose natural resources have been exploited for the wider good. But I think we agree that it's possible for the regions of the UK to do better as part of a bigger union.

Re: Would you ignore the referendum?

@codejunky

"I just made the point that you were absolutely wrong...factually incorrect and you just admitted you were factually incorrect as there was a larger number which was the majority. Thats the end of the factual discussion regardless of your opinions"

I merely referred to a mathematical inequality in the set of Natural numbers whereas you are talking about a belief based on that inequality.

“Now for the sting- we didnt leave based on 1 referendum...So we meet your measurement criteria?”

No. You can beat down random errors with more measurements, but the systematics remain. Furthermore, the additional ballots that you talk about weren't confined exclusively to the narrow question of EU membership, and so other confounding effects (such as Corbyn's leadership to name but one) were added.

“immediate benefit (such as vaccine supply) is important to consider.”

The claim about Covid vaccines —that they were available more quickly in the UK because it was no longer an EU member state— was debunked long ago. The UK’s action on vaccines in 2020 would have been permissible if it had still been an EU member state; the UK placed orders early —as it would have been entitled to do within the EU— and the right of approval for use in a public health emergency was granted under regulation 174 of the Human Medicines Regulations of 2012. The UK was still an EU member in 2012. The vaccine claim was simply a piece of propaganda thrown to gullible leave supporters for them to lap-up and disseminate; clearly, that has worked.

“So you say idiots answered a different question than the one posed? Unfortunately not much we can do about that when asking opinions.”

This is one of those systematic factors I’ve been talking about; you admit it’s there and neither of us can quantify its effect on the outcome. This illustrates why a narrow numerical inequality cannot be relied upon to infer what a majority of people actually wanted in respect of EU membership. You seem to have arrived at an understanding of one of the fundamental flaws in the referendum.

“You explicitly stated that the personalities supporting a view helped sway your vote, which sounds XFactor style over substance decision making. Sorry if I misunderstood you but it sounded clear.”

I made no such explicit statement about “personalities”; I referred to persons not personalities. I considered only their attributes that were pertinent to a decision about EU membership, not the "style" of those persons — whatever you mean by that.

Re: Would you ignore the referendum?

@codejunky

"If Scotland left the UK they wouldnt be eligible to join the EU. But the UK isnt to be held hostage by Scotland."

Your first sentence is a moot point. But you don't want to let them have another independence referendum; even given that the circumstances have changed —somewhat drastically— and they clearly want to be part of the EU.

Now I think I understand you.

Re: Would you ignore the referendum?

@codejunky

Your response illustrates my point: you argue that a single numerical inequality provides some kind of absolute truth as a basis for a major long-term policy — but without any understanding of the relationship between a single raw measurement and the question at issue. In any field of measurement we frequently find different numerical values for different measurements of the same thing, due to random and systematic factors. If we’re comparing two things, this can lead us, for a trivial example, to believe that one distance is greater than another when in fact the opposite is true. This is really very basic measurement theory of the kind that I encountered in school science classes over half a century ago.

The 2016 referendum was advertised as a non-binding referendum on whether the UK should remain a member state of the EU, or leave. That might sound simple enough, but —as amply demonstrated over the last seven years— there is considerable disagreement over the meaning of the question and the consequences of the answer, particularly for leaving. Prominent leave campaigners argued that we would remain part of the single market; there were repeated claims that we would have most or all of the benefits of membership at a greatly reduced cost and with the benefit of some poorly-defined “freedoms”.

These amount to systematic factors influencing the response to the question. As if this isn’t enough, I’ve already pointed-out that some people probably answered a different question about whether they supported David Cameron’s austerity government. And I’m not even considering the possibility of a campaign of external influence via social media. Arguably there were systematic factors in the other direction, but from a poorly-articulated remain campaign I recall little more than shroud waving. We cannot assume that these balance each other in any way; instead, they merely render any belief in the result to be risible. And that would apply if it was 52-48 in favour of remain.

You can argue that this is the same as any election (and those are bad enough), but this was not just any election: it is a long term change in our relationship with our nearest neighbours and most significant suppliers and trading partners that has consequences for generations.

Given that we had a referendum, I made my decision not, as you suggest, “Xfactor”-style, but on listening to the arguments and examining the motives, including trying to determine who stood to gain from an apparently miraculous opportunity that few of its supporters understood —particularly the ones least likely to benefit. Every encounter I've had with a leave supporter since then has only reinforced my view that only a very vocal few of them stood to gain, while the rest merely believed them.

Re: Would you ignore the referendum?

@codejunky

Loosely speaking, it is a fact that nA>nB=true for all nA>nB; you should be careful about drawing any conclusions beyond that — or anything else for that matter. For example:

I am not a "Scot Nat" (or a Scot), although —while I think the UK is better-off as a union— I understand some Scots' lack of enthusiasm for the union, especially given that in their independence referendum, continued membership of the EU for Scotland was paraded by the No campaign as an obstacle to Scottish independence.

I don't want another referendum on EU membership. After more than forty years of almost constant renegotiation, I think we had a pretty good deal as a member, but that's broken irreparably now. I don't see us rejoining in my lifetime and I suspect the terms imposed —particularly adoption of the Euro— might be worse than trying to make a better job of the situation we're in now.

I opposed UK membership of the EEC/EU for decades before I'd ever heard of Farage and co. I gave careful consideration to voting leave in 2016, but the existence of people like Farage, Rees-Mogg and many others backing them helped me to decide to vote remain. While I consider that the EU is highly flawed, it has acted increasingly as a counterweight to the more problematic political environment that has developed in the UK over the last forty years or so. Unfortunately this hasn't been enough to arrest the UK's descent into an age of unreason.

I'll give you one thing: I agree that Cameron's government should not have taken a position but instead should have remained neutral, as the Wilson government did for the referendum in 1975, leaving individuals to campaign in their own way. I think Cameron's support for remain was a systematic factor that contributed to the leave vote. For many people it simply became a referendum on Cameron's austerity government, and they didn't care that some jobs or infrastructure in their neighbourhood were only there because of EU funding.

Re: Would you ignore the referendum?

Farage's position as stated before the referendum appears to be more reasonable than yours; he seemed to recognise that a narrow majority would leave a margin of uncertainty —although after the event he seems happy to regard the result as closed for eternity.

You say: "Inferring majority from mathematical factual majority is ill considered? Is this where feelings are more important than the facts? Reality doesnt matter? Sorry I disagree, the fact is the majority voted brexit."

It's nothing to do with feelings vs facts and it IS about reality. Let me remind you of what I said: "And while we can say "37.5 > 34.7 = true", inferring something like a "majority" from that is ill considered (and probably ill conditioned),"

We don't usually use a single raw measurement datum to infer anything important or consequential, unless we have a high and reasonable degree of confidence in all the random and systematic errors that might come into play. So it's fine to say "I can't afford that £2 cup of coffee because I only have £1 in my pocket" (although, even then, I've later found that I actually had another few quid and kicked myself). But in any field of engineering or science we routinely collect a large plurality of measurements and then go through a process of inference that involves a very great deal more than elementary mathematical inequality. That's true even for something like a simple length, height or distance, when it matters.

Tens of millions of samples might be enough to beat down the random factors to a level of better than ~0.05%, but the systematics sometimes get you long before that, and in something like a political referendum they're utterly outrageous —and that's before we consider anything criminal (allegedly).

So please forgive me if I don't appear to share your binary confidence in a crude mathematical inequality —at one moment— as the basis for a major policy like continued membership of the EU.

The path (AND THE MATH) from measurement to insight, understanding and decision is a great deal more complicated and hazardous than you seem to appreciate. That's why I think a referendum is a very bad idea —for leaving or joining.

Re: Would you ignore the referendum?

"37.5 > 34.7 = majority."

Funnily enough, you appear to be at odds with Nigel Farage; he didn't seem to be willing to accept a narrow remain majority, saying: "In a 52-48 referendum this would be unfinished business by a long way." (http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/nigel-farage-wants-second-referendum-7985017)

And while we can say "37.5 > 34.7 = true", inferring something like a "majority" from that is ill considered (and probably ill conditioned), which is why a referendum —or at least one held in such a casual manner— on something as major as continued membership of the EU, was a completely daft idea.

Re: Would you ignore the referendum?

No, it isn't necessarily a majority. Correcting for turnout, the result was

Leave: 37.5%

Remain: 34.7%

We cannot say very much about the views of the 28% that didn't vote, although, of those I know that didn't vote, most favoured remain but thought their vote wasn't needed because there would be a clear victory for remain. Others may have a different experience.

All we can say is that the whole thing was ill-considered. Having a referendum on EU membership every year might arguably be more "democratic", but, even if the "majority" screamed to have their own way each time, the outcome wouldn't necessarily be good for many people.

Quantum computing startup probed in report, securities suit

Whether they "open the box" or "take the money", they'll need a modern version of Michael Miles to help them Take Your Pick. Hughie Green presented Double Your Money.