* Posts by Scott Broukell

968 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Sep 2007

IT'S ALIVE! China's Jade Rabbit rover RETURNS from the DEAD

Scott Broukell
Thumb Up

Re: Good news

It will certainly have given them some paws for thought.

(Mines the little fur-lined number)

'No, I CAN'T write code myself,' admits woman in charge of teaching our kids to code

Scott Broukell
Meh

Garbage in garbage out

Programming is breaking a given process down into logical steps and writing a sequence of instructions to emulate the process in a program language of your choice. When I studied 'puters we spent months doing stuff long-hand on paper with pencils and rubbers and learned to debug our routines with the grey matter in our skulls. Only when we could demonstrate the most refined, or thereabouts, logic and code skills were we allowed a time-slot to access the main frame. But I imagine there is very little in what I describe to attract today's students to such activities - they want to be quickly and easily rewarded with flashy graphics and bright lights. Many years later I remember chuckling to myself playing with Pascal 'Turtles', controlling mechanical parts directly, using CRT monitors and with more languages than I could shake a stick at.

So please, teach them about logic first, then introduce the fun part of making their written instructions actually do things in the real world and don't teach them to just make web shites - those that wish to construct HTML will gravitate towards that of their own accord later.

Note to Teachers - it can even be a cross-curricula activity as well you know, so as to broaden the scope and areas of application and to encourage as many pupils as possible.

WHEEE... CRUNCH! iPad Mini tops list of most breakable slabs, mobes

Scott Broukell
Meh

Wrist Tether ?

I can't help thinking that a simple tether would assist the user in gravitationally induced mishaps such as the ones described. Maybe that wouldn't be 'Kool' (i wouldn't know) but it might also guard against street snatches by thieves on push bikes? I mean one only needs one hand/finger to smear the screen with, leaving the other one free to act as an anchor. I've probably missed something.

CERN outlines plan for new 100km circumference supercollider

Scott Broukell
Meh

Re: Why not space?

Which may result in;

S - uperconducting

P - hysics

H - ousing

I - mmense

N - eodymium

C - elestiral

T - okomak

E - experimental

R - esearch

or a large black hole, whichever applies.

Scott Broukell
Meh

Keep banging those rocks together guys

Strikes me that after many thousands of years of human development we are still only at the stage of banging the rocks together. Nothing terribly wrong with that, it eventually, after a very, very, slow start, led to some remarkable technology. Now the 'rocks' are just very very small indeed and are only fleeting examples of their earlier much larger counterparts. Maybe this collision thing tells us everything we would need to know about where and what we are, or maybe the next 'step' in our development is just around the corner and a very different and distinct kettle of quantum fishes is about to be fed to the dolphins. CERN - Concussion Experiments Requiring Neutrons. (well heavy lead ions and protons anyway).

Think British weather is bad? It's nothing to this WOBBLY ALIEN planet

Scott Broukell
Joke

23.5 degrees over 26,000 years

I told you I felt the earth move darling!

London's King of Clamps shuts down numberplate camera site

Scott Broukell
Meh

Re: Just wondering?

Dear Sir, I should very much like to register a complaint with regard to your Auto-E-car Parking map system. Last Thursday afternoon, whilst visiting my tailor on the Commercial Road, my vehicle promised me, in all good faith, that, having dropped me off at said establishment, it would promptly dispatch itself to a legitimate and legal, clamp-free, parking zone and await my further instruction, whilst measurements were taken and the finest cloth examined. Upon completion of my duties at the outfitters I summoned my vehicle forth, but, alas, to no avail. It later transpired that due to a 'glitch' in said mapping system, my vehicle had rather unwisely chosen the Shadwell Basin as a legitimate parking zone. It will take me months to dry out the patent leather seat covers and damasc covered interior upholstery, let alone drain the rest of the mechanical parts. I demand you recompense me forthwith and also refund the 3 Guineas, 11 and sixpence I was forced to hand over in order to be ferried home on public transport! Please ensure that your systems are kept up to date at all times henceforth.

Scott Broukell
Meh

Just wondering?

What might be the reaction of a (future coming to you soon) self-drive Google Car et al to being clamped. Would said vehicle perhaps be aware, via sensors, that it had been clamped (and therefore advise its owner accordingly) or would it make every attempt to drive off when later commanded by it's, remote, owner? Perhaps future clamps will have embedded chippery that will alert said vehicle to the clamping predicament? - but then fiendish souls could rig clampless chippery to just disable the vehicle by making it think it was clamped. Or, better still, said vehicle might be able to detect approaching clampers and remove itself to another, less clamp-prone, location. Just saying.

Unmanned, autonomous ROBOT TRUCK CONVOY 'drives though town'

Scott Broukell
Meh

Auto-truck Convoy delivery notice ...

We called but nobody was home, we left your packages with your those nice folks next door who were very willing to help, oops!

Yes, HP will still sue you if you make cartridges for its inkjet printers

Scott Broukell
Meh

What!

You mean there's coloured ink in there and stuff - I thought the machine was just designed to just fold A4 sheets in ever more intricate, wrinkled and bizarre ways. Learn sunnink evry day dun'tcha!

A BBC-by-subscription 'would be richer', MPs told

Scott Broukell
Meh

Riches

The BBC and our culture would be a lot richer if the BBC simply stuck to what it is good at, namely; Current Affairs, News, Documentaries, Investigative Journalism, Consumer Programs and some off-the-wall Comedy / Satire. I'm sure it could easily achieve that on the pittance we license payers cough up. Leave the glitzy-fashion-pop-cookery-drama drivel to the other channels (there are certainly enough of them) - see, massive saving there already. I'm an avid World Service fan cos it broadens my, some would say limited, intellectual horizons and gives me a better understanding of the world (not just my tiny corner) - so get rid of the pop-tart-talk-radio-local-fone-in garbage while your at please.

>Rant Over .... nurse...

Our Milky Way galaxy is INSIDE OUT. Just as we suspected, mutter boffins

Scott Broukell
Meh

Re: Many dimensions

@Khaptain

Or what about a simultaneous miniscule spherical (oblate) surface, within, a massively larger spherical (oblate) surface and replace the euclidean topography of the torus with pathways that continue each surface infinitely, as you suggest, but via black holes, contorting and compressing the field-lines of space time endlessly along said 'conveyor belt'. The 4% of matter we can account for, which includes ourselves and all observable galaxies, being made up merely from the exhaust / pollution / remnants, call it what you will, of the sudden massive inflation which befell the quark-gluon plasma that hung around for a relatively short while after an instability / perturbation set in on the singularity, that may or may not itself, have resulted from a prior super-massively-tiny universe, having reached a (near) perfect entropic state of pure photons only to find itself ripped apart by the fact that space-time cannot tolerate a static 'conveyor belt', whichever direction it is traveling in. That's my take on it.

Five UK banks sign up to hook up customers' ACCOUNTS to their MOBILE DEVICES

Scott Broukell
Meh

Re: Age realated Dislike Disorder here too.

Now, now, we probably have ourselves to blame for any broad swathes of poorly educated masses 'sexting' with their mobile devices by letting blooming hippie teachers start rearranging the desks into little 'groups' in the 70's.

That aside, digital transactions of this type will most probably be lapped up by younger generations and that is to be expected after all. All we can do is remind them of the 'old ways' and encourage the brighter ones to absorb a wider range of historical knowledge such that they might come up with new, and improved, 'ways' compared to our old ones. I just hope they keep cash around for a few more years.

Got to go, my smart-home, I.O.T., app says my slippers are at optimum temperature are are to be removed from atop the wood burner forthwith ;)

Scott Broukell
Meh

Age realated Dislike Disorder here too.

Whilst there was enough of an uproar to reverse, at least for the moment, the recent proposal to do away with cheques, I fear that this is the thin of the wedge with regard to the demise of cash altogether. Cash is apparently expensive to print, distribute and count, so banks would love us to give it up all together and embrace entirely digital transactions. Although cash might 'cost' the banks something it appears to have no affect whatsoever on their beloved bonuses etc, so it can't cost them that much can it. Apart from the security issues, which will probably end up costing the banks a lot more than cash ever did, despite counterfeiting etc, it is a worrisome thing indeed.

Use strong passwords and install antivirus, mmkay? UK.gov pushes awareness campaign

Scott Broukell
Meh

[quote] "always ensuring to check online retail sites are secure" - Presumably this makes Mrs. Potter of number 92 'The Willows' a world-class penetration tester?

Bosch launches obligatory Internet of Things push

Scott Broukell
Meh

Might have its uses

If then the washing machine could alert me to the fact that I have, ONE AGAIN, put my deep russet colored corduroys in the wash together with my wife's delicate white undies, then such technology could save me a lot of hassle. Although, since world and dog are pretty unlikely, one would very much hope, to notice the finer details of my wife's newly brown-rust-coloured undergarments, the operative word being 'under' garments, I can't ever see what all the fuss is about. In fact I would go so far as to say that one such pronounced benefit of such a camouflage technique is the visible diminution of the skid marks on my own undies, ah well.

Time travellers outsmart the NSA

Scott Broukell
Alien

Old news in the next hour

I have already seen what you are going to be doing here.

Cassini spots MEGA-METHANE SEAS on the north pole of Titan

Scott Broukell
Happy

Chemistry set

It never fails to amaze me that some 350,000 years or so after a pint-sized quark-gluon plasma emerged from somewhere or other, as yet unknown, the entire universe turned into an enormously large, active, chemistry set.

UK fondleslab surge slowing, says sales-sniffing specialist

Scott Broukell
Happy

Re: They're already as good as they need to be

I'm a techie as well and I know just what you mean. I own several abaci and they are all pretty much of a muchness. The earliest of which, thought to come from Isfahan (c.550 BC), is the best though, especially with a regular little dab of mutton fat on the 'wires'. Sure, over the development course of a thousand years the colour and texture of the beads changed from time to time but I wish I hadn't splashed out on some of the more recent models, just cos they were more blinged-up, sheesh.

Submerged Navy submarine successfully launches drone from missile tubes

Scott Broukell
Meh

Loitering vertical capsule expulsion system.

How about using the kind of vertically-orientated tech that has been used for oceanographic survey buoys for years. Those things spend years going up and down automatically in the water column monitoring salinity / temps etc. Discreetly launch the pre-programmed launch vehicle (firing tube) nice and quietly into position a few meters below the surface, assisted with said buoyancy tech. Move away to desired position and wait for the thing to fire out of the tube at predetermined time and acquire target etc. That way, if the launch does attract the enemy's attention you're long gone. Of course, you would need confidence in your knowledge of currents / drift etc. but surely that's got to be a big part of sub navigation already? If launch fails, after a predetermined time limit, it destroys itself. But only after sending out a brief, coded, sonar message as a warning - never return to a firework you have already lit!

Well, I'm of to the patent office, see yer.

Scott Broukell
Mushroom

BBC series .....

"If you would like to find out more about the awesome power of nuclear weapons, press the RED button now!"

Women crap at parking: Official

Scott Broukell
Meh

Parking Rant

I am under the distinct impression that a growing number of people, of all genders and ages, are becoming sh*t at parking. That and refusing to take a shopping trolly back to the correct repository and instead choosing to leave it in the middle of the adjacent parking bay. When I park I like to consider the person(s) already parked, or who might park, next to me. They may for instance be elderly, have need of pushchairs and tons of baby-related equipment or just require that they can open a car door more than 2.5 inches for reasons of ingress/egress. I accept that in may cases car park layout with bays that are patently too narrow must take some of the blame, but generally a lot more consideration for others wouldn't go amiss.

ROBOT SWARM positions itself over EARTH ... to probe our magnetic field

Scott Broukell
Stop

Bloomin' Pols, coming over here and muckin abhart wiv our magnetisms!

VIOLENT video games make KIDS SMARTER – more violent the BETTER

Scott Broukell
Meh

As a youngster, at the dawn of television, I played Monopoly ™ at least twice a day, almost every day, for many, happy years. I've since become CEO of a massive private banking corporation - I take unbridled risks with vast sums of money every hour of the day, enjoy massive annual bonuses and stomp on little plebs with their grandiose plans for establishing ethical / green businesses that create worthwhile jobs and contribute to social development. I therefore defy anybody to claim that such worthwhile youthful activities led me astray in any way whatsoever.

We're making too much say CryptoLocker scum in ransom price cut

Scott Broukell
Meh

How nice of them

Will they be offering loyalty points next?

Sign up to our crypto-bot-net offer now - infect 1000 machines in the next month and we will be giving away sheeple bitstuff free!

BLAST OFF! NASA's MAVEN Mars probe ROARS into orbit

Scott Broukell
Coat

Come on, tell us the truth

This one is carrying the pilau rice and poppadoms that the Indian delivery vehicle forgot.

LOOK UP! Comet ISON could EXPLODE in our skies – astronomers

Scott Broukell
Coat

Extended warranty

Don't worry there's still time to take out an extended warranty plan and have it replaced 'new for old' in the event that your super fast lump of rock and ice does fragment unexpectedly. What's that .... wrong Comet, doh!

Falkland Islands almost BLITZED from space by plunging European ion-rocket craft

Scott Broukell
Meh

Recycling - More bits of crud in orbit

It apparently started it's final decent at c.80Km altitude. If, as is predicted, only some 25% of it's overall mass survives, how much of the charred remnants will remain in low earth orbit, floating around about up there, perhaps not unlike the vast mat(s) of plastic down here in the Pacific ocean?

I am aware that there is ongoing research into how to deal with all the other potentially dangerous crud we have hoisted above us and would ask if any better qualified Regaunauts might have answers to above. Thank you.

Brit PM raps Facebook for allowing GORY beheading vids

Scott Broukell
Meh

Mirror mirror on the wall

The internet is just a great big digital mirror to all humanity, (well something approaching 90% of it anyway). As such pretty much all human life is there; kittens galore, snuff movies and everything in between. Most people are inclined towards searching out their preferred particular 'niche'. We have abundant tools to find the stuff we want to and we can all choose to 'click' on whatever we want - accepting that some may not be adequately mentally or intellectually equipped to make an 'informed' choice. Trying to hide it all away and hand out digital rose-tinted glasses to the masses isn't the answer - education about what materials are available is.

I would assert that there is a large amount of 'rubber necking' that goes on and it is this which makes the headlines and shapes political response. If you stumble across a video of a beheading you can cancel it with pretty immediate affect. Or perhaps there is a built-in human morbid curiosity that compromises avoidance reaction. If I pass an accident on the road my instinct is to concentrate more on the actions of other road users around me, not gorp at the wreckage. I know driving can be a seriously dangerous activity, so I try to be alert to that and modify my behaviour accordingly. I know there is material I don't want to view on the internet and I also know that there are some pretty appalling things humans can do.

Censorship doesn't make the nasty things vanish into the digital ether.

Is it not better that the 'mirror image' is clear and accurate for all to see, however bad some of it is.

Educate those who are more susceptible to what they might encounter so that they can make better and more informed decisions when using the internet, that's what I say.

Perhaps every browser start-up should begin with an in-your-face billboard carrying a warning about what lies beyond?

TWELFTH-CENTURY TARDIS turns up in Ethiopia

Scott Broukell

Nope, only folks wedding videos were used for re-recording.

Oh, shoppin’ HELL: I’m in the supermarket of the DAMNED

Scott Broukell
Alert

Noooo no no

Shhh will you or you'll give Steve Ballmer ideas about where to use his touch-screen OS magic next ! After all, he'll have a bit more spare time on his hands now won't he.

The life of Pi: Intel to give away Arduino-friendly 'Galileo' tiny-puter

Scott Broukell
Pint

Memory lane

As a youngster I enjoyed building very simple circuits with the older (or should that be antique), Bread-Board style electronics kits, the ones which came with a printed resistor color-guide (very handy). I later graduated to Varistrip boards, IC sockets and soldering irons, which was a huge step forward. I am gobsmacked at today's equivalent Learn & Play technology. I really ought to spend less time at the Derby & Joan club tea dances and get on with a miss spent golden age. Ah! the memories - time for a beer.

IPCC: Yes, humans are definitely behind all this global warming we aren't having

Scott Broukell
Pint

Don't worry Anon (15:35GMT)

Nature will reduce human population all in good time. It won't be a very nice Pay-Back to live through but it will happen, if, as you point out, we fail to seriously address the matter ourselves.

BTW - I understand that throughout large parts of Africa and Asia it remains very difficult to obtain family planning and the taking of such responsibility is still largely frowned upon anyway. All that good effort and funding gone to waste, really sad.

It remains to be seen who might prevail, in terms of race and ethnicity, when things settle back down again though. Who has the best chance do ya think.

(Enjoy a cold beer, it's Friday)

IT bloke denies trying to shag sheep outside football ground

Scott Broukell
Coat

IT bloke / Sheep . . . .

Maybe he was simply trying to locate the Ewe S B port ?

Shop-a-suspect web security system: 'We've helped cops nab 100 suspects'

Scott Broukell
Meh

Anyway

Helps to take ones mind of what banks and mega corporations get up to I suppose.

I know shop lifting and petty theft can be really, really hard on small business but I would much rather more effort be put into combating the rich bastards who continue unabated to rip people off. All depends how close and on which side you are relative to the law I guess.

It's the software, stupid: Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch bags big apps

Scott Broukell
Meh

Tethering and Security?

And how long before a little DIY, blue-tooth gizmo arrives that infiltrates that tethering, trawls your phone for data and leaves it quietly calling premium rate number(s), all because you came within 2m of said gizmo in the pocket of some evil perp intent on all of the above ? Just asking - you know how totally secure all this kit is these days (?).

Women in IT: ‘If you want to be taken seriously, dress like a man’

Scott Broukell
Happy

Re: It's a sad truth of the world sadly...

I agree 110% with your last statement - the women I have worked with in IT and other areas have, in my view, all been better in their approach to understanding the client's needs and problems and not just imposing a solution without further ado. More than that, sharing information about how they will go about resolving the client's problems - where they feel the client will benefit from using that information, in order to perhaps avoid precipitating future problems etc.

Which, to my mind at least, would indicate that both men and women have a lot of knowledge and experience to share in IT - let's look past gender and get on with a learning experience together.

Have to agree with the suitable work-wear statements echoed above though. But as to 'pack' animals, women have just the same propensity you know.

Microsoft announces execution date for failed QR code-killer

Scott Broukell

Battleships

Is it me, or, does the Microsoft thingy look a bit like the old navy 'dazzle' camouflage from many years ago !?

NASA: Earth II may be hiding in unexamined data from injured Kepler

Scott Broukell
Meh

Earth II

I just can't see humans, the way we know them now Jim, ever leaving Earth further than say a jaunt to Mars, possibly. Sure we have made a trip equivalent to the front door step (Moon and back) but we are suitably adapted to this planet and any Earth II candidate is simply too far distant for our little legs to carry us.

I can imagine that machines we build could travel those distances and, perhaps, take with them the genetic material required to then reconstruct humans on a habitable planet, but that's about it. That would be more of a delivery system for genetic / bio-chemical material - but somewhat more sophisticated than the chance happening that kicked off life here on Earth I. In fact, given that scenario, I just can't see humans, the way we know them now Jim, being around at all when the machines embark on such a voyage. By that time the remaining, dominant, humans will be hardly visible deep inside their techno-exo-skeletal-mecha-whatsits.

That's not to discount the tremendous efforts born out of human curiosity to learn more about our home planet, it's near neighbors and it's, somewhat, precarious situation as a, relatively, big floating ball of hot iron and stone crust. Just saying.

Webcam stripper strikes back at vicious 4Chan trolls after year of bullying

Scott Broukell
Megaphone

The age of trolls - everywhere

It doesn't help that so much 'entertainment medja' is full of such utter trollish crap. Such delights as The Voice and The X Factor are exactly that - public engagement in trolling on the Big Screen. Viewers delight in taking a like or dislike to individuals on these shows and would seem to put greater energy into trashing those they dislike. They then share their venom with those who hold similar views and magnify their 'group' dominance when the voting comes along. Of course, it's all done in the best possible taste and wrapped up in the 'magic' of television. I mean, it's entertainment and it's right there in your living room, so what could possibly be bad about that! Sadly, it amounts to teaching the virtues of en-mass public trolling / bullying and the masses love it they do. Is it not, therefore, inevitable that such behaviour quickly takes root in such a fertile medium as the internet where anonymity and message 'reach' amplify it's effectiveness.

Russia's post-Snowden spooks have not reverted to type

Scott Broukell
Coat

Errmm .....

It's all a bit of an enigma to me ....

PHWOAR! Huh! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing, Prime Minister

Scott Broukell
Joke

Ah! Well ........

Easy Come

Easy Go

NASA outlines 2020 plans for Mars life search with Curiosity v2.0

Scott Broukell

Many, many, years in the future

Will the search will be for signs, amongst all the debris, of the whereabouts, history or fate, of the life form responsible for conducting a search for signs of life with such quaint mechanical devices. And, or, a search for signs of life from the debris of previous searches for signs of life amongst the debris left behind from the searches for signs of life amongst the debris of previous searches. I dunno, but the search goes on.

UK sitting on top of at least 50 years of shale gas – report

Scott Broukell

Re: Down the tubes we go (again)

Exactly, well said sir. Whereas Norway (and others?) decided to have a bit more of a of LONG TERM term thinking hat on and stuffed a percentage of revenues away for a rainy day and or research on replacement technologies / energy sources when the oil and gas dries up. We can but dream that our politicos might have a similar approach this time. There's a lot more oil and gas in the north sea yet, but it's very, very costly to get at just now, so, please, let's create a wee fund to assist us in getting to that in the near future.

Washout 2012 summer, melty Greenland 'nothing to do with Arctic ice or warm oceans'

Scott Broukell
Meh

What if .....

We are in the midst of a battle between natural forces, which are all ready to herald the arrival of the next glacial period, and human / industrial GHG emissions. The conflicting forces are embroiled in a battle of wills right up there above our heads and we are simply suffering the fallout of all this turmoil. Demonstrating that we really have managed to bung a reasonably large stick in the spokes of mother natures wheels, that's my take on it. We see increasingly shorter, more extreme, weather events, (both hot and cold) which, I would say, indicate such turmoil.

Not just telcos, THOUSANDS of companies share data with US spies

Scott Broukell
Meh

Inevitable problem ?

Wasn't there a certain inevitability about all this? I'm not excusing any cover up but we all knew from the very beginning that an increasingly digitally connected world would mean more and more of our holiday snaps, emails, rants and other digital missives would remain where we put them, on internet facing servers etc. Further to that we all seem happy with increasing amounts of our 'personal' data being trawled / shared by all manner of commercial establishments etc. Therefore I am not very surprised myself to find that security agencies want to take a peek at it all as well. We, perhaps blindly, make the choice to entangle our lives digitally, therefore that's now the best place to find out who we are and what we are up to. Because things in the real world can happen so fast, aided by light-speed communication, I can't see that relying on steaming open letters and hear-say would be a very good information channel when tracking down potential criminals or terrorists etc. Both the good guys and the bad guys increasingly rely on and use the internet and other accepted forms of digital communication.

The real shame is the lack of clarity and truth on the part of governments that this is indeed the case. Over the years there has been no end of sound advice aimed at children to keep themselves and their personal information safe from miscreants, so did we somehow feel that being adult meant that it was all right for us to ignore similar advice. Not really, perhaps, but it gets in the way when you which to digitally connect to the big wide world.

Inevitably I suspect that those security agencies involved will no doubt have realised that at some point details of their underhand peeking would come out and I have no doubt that they will have planned for this. In such a 'connected' world it would be difficult to image that any such activity, especially if it entailed employing out-sourced personnel, would remain secret for long. More so, perhaps, with the growing number of people prepared to blow whistles who are making the headlines.

Are not these revelations then a good thing, to be welcomed, and do they not mean that at last we are starting to talk about our connected, digital, lives and what they mean to us all as individuals, security agencies, groups and miscreants. We therefore also have to accept that the lack of inherent security in all things digital will mean that others can gain access to our little bits of data as they fly down the wires and across the disk platters.

Many I suspect would boil down what I have said above into the phrase 'If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear', and that is kind of where I am going, but, I remain convinced that the most important thing to come out of this is the chance to discuss where we go from here. What forms of oversight, control and independent analysis do we want to see governing this kind of surveillance, because it's not going to go away very soon is it.

The internet is a reflection of all things good and bad about being human, but, it also has the potential to break down cultural barriers that have kept us apart, as a unit, for millennia. I welcome that 'sharing' of experience and knowledge, even if it comes at a somewhat detrimental price to our overall digital liberty.

We may certainly argue that we need to wrest back control of our personal devices and stop-up the back doors of data flow that track all most everything we use those devices for, but, whilst we continue to use digital data traffic the ease with which that traffic can be monitored must be accepted.

So let's see if we can find an acceptable solution to this inevitable problem shall we, after all, the speed of such digital communication also enhances the speed with which whistles can be blown.

At #guardiancoffee, we can now taste the future through a PRISM!

Scott Broukell
Meh

errrm .....

... does the author also contribute to The Onion ?

What did the Lehman Brothers implosion look like to a techie?

Scott Broukell

Re: Tech & Trading... My own expose about a Trading Desk that was more geeky than IT...

I like what you wrote there. It's all testosterone fueled willy waving playground activity through and through. Not a care in the world and not related in any way shape or form the 'real' world. Once the spotty mathematicians from Berkley campus, or where ever, got their 'modern' trading formulas noticed we were all doomed. Banking does not need any of it.

Remember RBS - in days of yore, c.1980, twas a gold-standard, rock solid investment, nothing fast and fancy, just steady as you go, long term growth. Then that sh**head Goodwin and a bunch of hangers-on got involved and trashed the legacy that had taken so many dedicated staff so many years to build.

Scott Broukell
Megaphone

Banking failure

Any bank that screws around should fail as a result without any recourse to tax payer funded bailouts etc, just FAIL. But, first we need to do two things; 1) Completely separate retail banking from investment banking and, 2) Dramatically increase the number of retail banks. Since deregulation UK banking has condensed itself into a hand full of mega-banks (not good for Mr & Mrs Smith, but dandy for high-flying greedy gits with an uncontrollable urge to gamble with big bucks). Granted the financial sector of the UK generates significant income, but these banking giants are not what said Mr & Mrs Smith need or want. Bring back many, many, more mutual and smaller retail banks - who take smaller and more calculated risks on local businesses and enterprise. Yes, these have to be allowed to fail as well if they mess up. The more banks you have in the sector the smaller the hole they punch when one does fail. Bring back local banking for local people, where you get to meet and know the manager, or at least the deputy-manager and staff, of your local branch. I am conscious that I sound like a ranting old git sometimes, because I am just that - but in my day you had to put on a suit and talk, face-to-face, with bank staff, not phone an 0800 number and wait while some spotty youth clicked some buttons. You took away a sense of the responsibility of the financial agreement you had just signed up to from such meetings as well. Money has just got too free and easy these days that's the root of it all.

All in all I wouldn't mind large brokerage bonuses so much if what I have just outlined above meant that investment bankers had to work a bit harder for it. Fair play and just rewards to the IT staff who back them up too, but please, keep your big bucks deals out of the way of my little piggy bank.

IF $rant over goto $have a lie down.

All major UK ISPs prepping network-level porn 'n' violence filters

Scott Broukell
Pint

Re: Obituary for The Internet

Well said sir! - money and greed corrupts.

(here, have a beer)