Posts by Doctor Syntax

Re: It wasn't broke so we fixed it...

As opposed to real debt.

Re: UAPs, previously known as UFOs

I don't know if it was one of your infamous Pentagon videos but I do recall seeing one sequence shot on film through the starboard side of the canopy from inside an aircraft cockpit. It consisted of a group of lights apparently keeping very exact station from each other and the plane. When the shot was zoomed in the points turned into larger blotches of light.

Having spent the first half of my working life using microscopy - including helping out at student classes - I know very well the appearance of a grossly unfocussed light source. I could see that the camera lens had a 5-blade diaphragm. I'm quite sure there was a cluster of exactly that number of indicator lights somewhere on the port side of the cockpit.

Re: Cool

I know of one published picture. It was taken by my cousin's son and published in a UFO magazine.

It was a ban lin suspended on a fishing line. The magazine took the bait.

Re: Sigh

"Why the leap from unidentified/unexplained to wooooooo?"

There was a bloke in Sheffield recently who "identified" a "UFO" and decided to signal it with his laser pen for almost 40 minutes.

He currently has a 6 month suspended sentence for "using the laser beam to dazzle or distract the pilot [of a police helicopter], contrary to the Laser Misuse (Vehicles) Act 2018."

Re: NHS Linux

"NHS Digital actually gets quite the good price on Microsoft software"

It's still a cost.

Yes, Linux will bring an admin cost. So do MS products. I know from my own experience how much less admin time is spent in keeping Linux up to date so that would be another cost reduction. And the NHS has learned the cost of not keeping Windows up to date.

Pots and planning

I used to commute into Marylebone. Over a few months I witnessed an amazing arse-first sequence of events which I'm sure was due to different budgets.

1. The station was painted. The painters were thorough. One of them even picked out in lovely detail the frieze above the magazine kiosk between platforms. It was, BTW, one of those 3-sided stalls where you could pick up the latest copy of whatever paper or magazine you wanted and hand over the money and hardly break step while doing so.

2. The brickwork was cleaned by sandblasting. The new paintwork was dulled by being covered in dust.

3. The forecourt was reorganised. The newly painted kiosk was demolished and replaced by a shop you had to walk into rather than past, much less convenient.

4. One set of tracks was removed by filling it up with rubble, covering part of one of the newly sandblasted walls. A replacement was made by excavating a very wide platform which had provided potential functionality of allowing vehicles to drive in to deliver whatever might be needed to trains.

I stopped using it before discovering the purpose of this last bit but I suspect it was to demolish the entire sandblasted wall, erect a new one and sell off a bit of the footprint as real estate. I'm quite sure this appalling project planning* was due to different budgets whose holders never shared their plans.

* I exaggerate. There clearly was nothing worth calling a plan.

Re: Tech is not the solution.

Up to a point. GPs are independent businesses so can make decisions how they work within the limits of what they can afford. Some equipment such as ECG and ultrasound will be within the budget of a reasonable sized practice.

But the way our GP works, if a doctor decides a blood test is necessary they don't take a sample there and then, they offload it to a phlebotomist. That might be sensible if the patient were simply send down the corridor for that to be done, but no, it means another appointment and a delay in diagnosis.

Re: I owe NHS IT a lot

It sounds a bit familiar. Some time ago I visited Leeds by train. A local company who i know produced a healthcare system was advertising for staff, no experience necessary.

Re: Did I get this right?

The two OpenReach engineers I spoke to a while ago were very down to earth. Waists down in the manholes adjacent to the foortway box & DSLAM to be exact. They were reworking all the connections which they said were in poor condition.

The call centre I'd spoken to about intermittent connections hadn't been informed about this and had offered to send an engineer out to check with an £80 charge if nothing was found. Of course nothing would have been found because the guys in the field would have finished the job. It's just as well I took a walk down the road before agreeing to that offer.

My complaint that the call centre should have been made aware of local work like that was summarily dismissed.

Nothing would be good enough to replace BT senior manglement.

Re: MTTI?

We ditched that about 2015 - or earlier. The Home Office has never subscribed to that idea.

Re: Its always the simple things

WTF???

Re: I can never ....

540 minumum

You're not making enough attempts to plug them in. If by chance the first attempt to plug it in appears to work this, in fact a superposition with the true connection which requires at least two attempts to insert the plug. You need to unplug it, turn it upside down, fail to plug it in and then turn it back to plug it in properly. This is the consequence of the strange quantum properties of the USB standard.

Re: Maybe not Linux but Office maybe ditchable

but of course, now we have the "where's the ribbon" crowd...

Once MS had been forced to paint themselves into a corner by adopting open standards for documents they had no option but to make changes were they could. Hence all users forced to learn a new UA.

Re: Long Term Solution

The alternative is impressive.

Re: A simple solution

I like the idea but no doubt the production of "drafts" would be automated PDQ.

Re: Education itself is partly to blame here.

I'd like to think "we" got into assignments for other reasons. One is that some people usually underperform in exams. Some, like myself, might be slow and/or illegible writers (as soon as I got my first student grant I went to a shop down the road and bought a portable typewriter for £10). Others might not respond well to the stress - and, indeed, some will get more stressed than others. And even those who do generally perform well in exams can have the misfortune of not being well - or hitting the wrong phase of the menstrual cycle - on exam day.

On the whole assignments are better.

Back in the early days of the OU the course S2-3 was an environment course worth a sixth of a unit. It came at the end of the OU year and students would have got their necessary credits from the course they took alongside it. The assignment was voluntary. It was to write up an investigation of their own choosing. I had the good fortune to be a tutor marking those assignments. Most of them were a write-up of something the student had already put years of observation, care and thought into. Marking became a matter of wondering what to do when I'd just given a 10 and the next one was even better. I don't think many papers received less.

Re: Self Referential

He should certainly mark himself X.

Re: vulnerabilities

It's certainly not something you'd look for in something privacy related. You also have to ask yourself how it got there.

Did the developers put it in deliberately and if so why?

If it got dragged in with some other stuff imported from some repository somewhere what else got dragged in? And why did the developers not spot it? And what else didn't they spot?

Either way it doesn't cast a good light on the development process.

Re: Sub-Contracted Privacy?? Really??

"Have I mentioned before ....?"

How would we know? You're posting A/C

Re: "it has earmarked “significant investment” for FY24 towards customer experience and branding"

"I’ve never picked anything based on how cool their advertising/branding is."

I'd be inclined to be negatively influenced if anything. The more that gets spent on such fripperies the less gets spent on the product.