Posts by John Brown (no body) 25376 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010
I think read somewhere, fairly sure in a comment in these very forums, the power of attorney expires on death.
Just checked and "The lasting power of attorney (LPA) ends when the donor dies. You must report the death of a donor to the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG).
Old and outdated "news".
Sep '21
"Until now, the ships have embarked the fifth-generation jets but never have the two 65,000-tonne behemoths launched the fighters from their flight decks at the same time.
That’s now changed with HMS Prince of Wales exercising with the RAF’s 207 Squadron in waters close to the UK, while, on the other side of the world, HMS Queen Elizabeth carries out flying operations over the Pacific with her jets from 617 Squadron and VMFA-211 of the US Marine Corps."
He's quite rightly pointing out how much more value for money it could have been had it been on time and on budget. He's also saying it's most likely *still* value for money even 15 years late and 20x over budget and suggesting that the next one, if on time and on budget, might be so much better both technically and value for money. While thinking on this and a likely successor, remember that JWST was in the first discussion phases before Hubble was even launched. That means the JWST successor is probably being discussed right now.
"the final decision is made at a level above one that actually understands what is needed."
Yes, that was my first thought on this matter too. How much IT buyers "remorse" is related to decisions made by the C-Suite and foisted on IT rather than being IT-led? Are Gartner measuring remorse or dissatisfaction? I suspect the latter, since the C-Suite are the Gartner customers and the IT teams are the people being polled.
"It won't raise wages. Corporations report record profits in tune of billions - there is plenty of idle money that can be spent on wages and also reduce organisations' Corporation Tax liability as a bonus"
That's certainly a part of it, at least with large companies trying to keep the dividend payouts and share prices up to "normal" levels. On the other hand, some of the biggest share holders are the people managing and paying out our pensions.
"Oddly the cpu was a NEC V20 or V30 which supposedly could run 8080 code (and CP/M-80?) natively."
It did. I can confirm. I upgraded a Tandy 1000A by replacing the 8088 with a V20 because it was 10% more efficient at the same clock speed and came with the extra benefit of running CP/M stuff.
"Proper use of language is very important, but you can't be good at programming just by being good at writing, and I'm sure he knew that."
Oh, I dunno. Writing a COBOL program can be a bit like writing a long-winded novel :-)
"the school was just a large south london comprehensive."
Considering when comprehensive schools where invented, it must have been right on the cusp of calculators being easily available. My LEA switched from secondary/grammar to comprehensive the year I started secondary education and I had saved up and bought my own calculator by age 12 or 13. I also did GCE O level Computer Studies starting in 4th form and was in the first or possibly second year the course even existed. Since the school year ahead of me was still Grammar school, the whole ethos of the school was still based around that so few other schools in the area did CS.
I agree :-)
People are describing what I would call "Computer Studies", or a more generic and all encompassing understanding of modern technology, how it works, how to use it and the basics of programming/scripting, ie user level stuff, the "reading/'riting/'rithmetic" of computing. Computer Science sounds a lot more off-putting to younger kids and has overtones of "nerds" at early teen school levels and, to me at least, is a maths and science heavy subject suited more for later specialism at a more mature age of 16/18+
I remember learning how to solve quadratic equations at school. It was part of maths, not a major component and I don't think I've ever had a use for that knowledge in the 40+ years since I learned it. At this stage of my life, I remember the term. I *might* recognise one if I saw it written down. School level education is full of stuff like that because one never knows who will be inspired, who will find it useful, who will go onto a career because they learned it. But most of us will "forget" much of what we learned at school simply through never ever needing to know about it in practical terms for the rest of our lives, never knowing if one day, just being aware that "it" exists might be useful and we can then look it up and refresh if needed.
"Everyone wants the shinny new CS grads"
I wonder how many of those 700,000 jobs annually actually need CS grads and not just people who can be taught on the job? Many people get university degrees and then use the fact of just having a degree to then go into a different field entirely. Do the applicants need a CS degree or just "a" degree. Or even a degree at all?
"Personally I think it's the "everyone should do everything" attitude that is the root of the problem. "
But if "everyone should do everything" is removed, who gets to decide who does what? What if the next Einstein or Hawking gets directed to needlework, arts and crafts instead of science and never finds out they have an aptitude for inventing the first FTL drive?
Give the youngest the basic, including social skills, the middle group some of everything and the oldest get to choose their areas of special interest. Pretty much how education works across much of the world now.
That's one of the reasons I have *ALL* of the "assistive" features turned off on my phone, eg auto-complete and the like. It's a work phone and if I'm sending an SMS, email, whatever, it's often technical. "Helpful" spelling corrections or auto-completes are invariably wrong because the words or acronyms don't exist in the dictionary. I'm still trying to figure out how to turn of "auto emojii" in Teams and Whatsapp :-(
I remember being confused watching a US film and a black guy called another black guy a coconut. I thought it was just some "in group" racist slang that someone of a different racial group would be slammed for using. I think it was a few years later I found out it was a huge insult for one black guy to say that to another black guy.
I once asked a colleague what an emojii in a message to me meant. He explained it to me. I replied "Obrigada". He said "what?" I said, "Thank you in Portugese". he said "why didn't you just say thankyou". I said, "if you sprinkle your conversation with random foreign "words" and expect me to understand, I'll do the same to you. He stopped using emojiis.
"And there's an EXTREMELY useful use case for emoji replies even of the perfunctory insincere type: If I reply with actual text then a normie feels obligated to reply with actual text and then I have to etc. etc. even though we're both already long done saying anything useful."
I find those conversations never quite get that far if, once the relevant information has been passed, my last and final response is simply "thanks" or "ta". I find people rarely reply after that. Although, annoyingly, if it's on teams, some people like to respond with a thumbs up button click which means my teams icon on the phone now has an alert on it so I have to clear that too. I suspect I'll have to reduce my final response on Teams chats to doing that thumbs up thing on the other persons last useful comment and hope that ends it. :-(
"a chat might go a bit further than a trite picture of a broken heart', yes if a family member died I might leave a sincere message, "
Not exactly emojii related, but similar, but was it David Cameron who famously thought LOL meant Lots Of Love and sent a message along the lines of "So sorry your mother died, LOL"
"Looks to me Bosch is investing nothing the EU and German federal governments are doing all the investing."
Came here to say the same thing! Nowhere in the article is a number mentioned of how much, if any, of Boschs own cash is going into this expansion, even though the article leads with "Bosch invests..."
"Having one or two cases per month where Amazon provides the police footage won't move the needle, people will assume it was for something like trying to track down a child that was kidnapped (and for all I know that's exactly what these cases were, i.e. seeing where a car goes after an abduction)"
Or one or two "high profile" cases. After all, millions of people every day have their personal details stolen and then published or sold on, but no one seems to be enforcing the laws properly or holding the people losing the data responsible. Maybe if something happened to "important" people, like, I dunno, some Supreme Court judges, then "the law" might sit up and take notice.
True, the UK is part of the continent and geographical area known as Europe, but the UK is not the whole of Europe. Charlie was replying to the comment "And yet it's Europe where every city center has more CCTV..."
The previous poster may also have been colloquially referring to the European Union as "Europe" as that is a fairly common if not properly accurate usage, and in those terms the UK is most definitely NOT in "Europe".
"I do get a bit worried that so many, maybe 10, like to hang around my house. I'm not that old yet."
"It is also an (attempted or actual) intimidation of a state official, which is a direct attack on the independent judiciary as one of the pillars of modern liberal democracy."
While in the main correct, it also highlights to the people that matter that this data was NOT properly secured and easily accessible so that it could be published. The reason it was so easily accessible is because there are no strong punishments for those people holding the data insecurely in the first place and this sort of things happens to millions of people on a daily basis and maybe it's time to look into this.
I suspect that for "parked", they mean stopped, with the foot on the brake and the gear stick in Drive position. Not parked as in not planning to move, or even "parked" is in having a smooching session with the GF. This is a US oriented article so "parked" may be used differently to other English speaking speaking.
"Think of the confusion dealing with a different sound could cause."
Not counting current EVs, there's a limited range of sounds from moving vehicles, whether that be whatever penis extension it was you just described or a Reliant Robin. If the variation is vastly expanded to various musical clips etc then that's a whole other ball game. :-)
"So how about we let the manufacturers set something reasonable "
From the article, it's clear that the manufactures preference is to allow customers to choose their own sound because "one size doesn't fit all" and (probably marketing) think different sounds for make, model, trim level and even year of manufacture (FFS!) should be different for every possible variation. With that in mind, do you really think the manufacturers are capable of coming up with a "reasonable" solution?
"I guess it'll take a while for us to adjust to the idea of whiney motors indicating drama and excitement rather than just thinking it'll be a short chase due to range restrictions."
Even now, with much of the world using digital TV and/or video, some productions still use the "snow" effect on screens with no signal for "dramatic effect" or obvious analogue signal break-up for weak signals :-)
"The paper is observing that if the peak was lower, by having a little more randomness in the demand, there would be fewer problems supplying the overall demand as it would be spread over a greater period of time."
That's true, but they are framing it like this is a revelation to the power companies. The power companies already know. They may not know precisely *why* it's happening, but they know it's happening and can account for it. On the other hand, as you say, it could be spread out more but that's really a public education thing, which the power companies might like to get involved in, but I suspect it would, in reality, end up with most[*] people thinking, "ah fuck it, I'll just add 'n' minutes to the timer". Most people will almost certainly add 1-5 mins, not actually making much of a difference. A real solution would be for "smart" home devices such as thermostats actually be smart and talk to others in the neighbourhood or the power company and negotiate a time around about when the user wants it on and come on sooner or later by some minutes.
[*] "most" being of those who even give it a thought, that is. There'll be plenty who think it doesn't apply to them or don't care, or assume others will do something. And, being the USA, there'll be a certain percentage who say something along the lines of "Muh FREEDOM!!! BigGuv/BigCorp ain't telling ME when I can turn on muh heat!!!"
The DD is supposed be the average monthly cost of your expected usage over the next 12 months or whatever, but is usually set at a level that leaves you with significant overpayment at the end. Theoretically, the smart meter should be giving them better data to set the DD at a more realistic level. But why would they when they can hold onto £millions in overpayments, especially across the summer and collect the interest on it.
I've always found a quick phone call sorts out the high level DD proposed and get it back to a realistic level leaving me with a small overpayment come the next re-assessment. If it's over £50 I ask for it back and it's normally in my account before the next DD goes out.
!I've had reasonable success with going back and saying "here's my usage over the last year/2years using your current pricing - you can see our monthly usage averages at x/month, so the DD should be reduced to that".
I've never bothered with all that. I just phone them up and complain they put it up too much and every time the person on the other end agrees and puts it back down again. No muss, no fuss, no "proving" my usage. It's just the "computer" sets a rate and it's always in their favour. I suspect it will be a bit different this year though when the next price negotiation comes around :-(
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