* Posts by Pompous Git

3087 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Sep 2014

Ex-IBMer sues Google for $10bn – after his web ad for 'divine honey cancer cure' was pulled

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: They walk amongst us

"your are making a logical faux pas that I see very often. Just because conventional med has failed you, doesn't automatically mean homeopathy is better."
You will have to quote my words on that as I cannot recall stating anything to the effect "homeopathy is better". What I have stated is that homeopathic is prescribed by conventional medical practitioners, that I have limited experience of homeopathic working and linked to a variety of papers on PubMed/Elsevier. I also agreed with the statement "Personally I'm not convinced by the theory, but many people report positive outcomes."

At this time I take a number of allopathic meds and a similar number of CAM meds that are also allopathic. All were prescribed by fully qualified health professionals. I suspect that had I not had such a positive experience with homeopathic over 30 years ago that I would not be experiencing the benefits of the CAM meds. I am fully in favour of evidence based medicine and continue to be amazed at the number of medical professionals who merely give this lip service.

"regarding your goat's warts, it's impossible to comment since there's no way of knowing exactly what you gave them. For all we know the warts receded for the simple reason that they got a good wash with clean water"
The goat was administered homeopathic thuja. Both of our dairy goats had their bags and teats washed immediately before milking. It's SOP because if you don't the milk deteriorates rapidly. The cure was suggested by my GP at the time as she was discovering that CAM was curing "incurable" chronic illness in her patients.

My GP also suggested that we use a Bach flower remedy (Rescue Remedy) when our infant son awoke in terror, which he did quite frequently. RR worked almost immediately, thus relieving The Gitling of a half hour of abject distress several times a week.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: They walk amongst us

"excessive cynicism, and unsubstantiated/outta context anecdotal claims appealing to supposed experts, like yours, opens the doors to precisely twats like this Abid"
I'd say that negative experiences such as I have experienced with the medical profession over the years caused my "excessive cynicism". Example: for 10 years I was diagnosed as a chronic asthmatic, not by one doctor, but several. It wasn't until I was at death's door that the correct diagnosis of congestive heart failure was made that I was prescribed drugs that actually worked as distinct from covering up a symptom.

My statistician friend who specialises in medical statistics points out that risk assessment from a doctor's POV is orthogonal to a patient's. While the patient usually just wants to get better, the doctor is more concerned with covering their arse and making enough money to pay for rapidly rising professional indemnity insurance premiums.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: They walk amongst us

"Homeopathy is, I agree, a scam. Fortunately, unless it is being sold in place of proper treatment (as it is in some countries), it is fairly benign. My wife loves homeopathy, but even she knows it is a psychological, not physiological, thing."
So how come homeopathy cured the warts on my goat's teats? I find it very hard to believe that was psychological. The vet assured me that the warts were caused by a virus and hence were incurable.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: They walk amongst us

"Let me Google that for you.

Homoeopathy [sic] is bullshit. "

Thanks for the link. Interesting:

"Despite the absence of funding, it appears that a number of prospective clinical trials using random assignment and control group designs have been accomplished. The results of these studies suggest that, in general, homeopathic treatments may offer some promise, particularly when compared to conventional medical treatments."

A systematic review of the quality of homeopathic clinical trials

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: They walk amongst us

"Pompous git....I guess you missed the key line in that article, that pretty much debunked their own analysis."
And I guess you can't read:
"The articles analyzed five strikes around the world, all between 1976 and 2003. The strikes lasted between nine days and seventeen weeks. All reported that mortality either stayed the same or decreased during, and in some cases, after the strike. None found that mortality increased during the weeks of the strikes compared to other time periods."

Doctors' strikes and mortality: a review

"They compared also May of the previous 3 years, with the one affected. What about March, what about June?"
Mortality varies through the year outside the equatorial zone. It's highest in the winter months and lower in the summer months.

While you may make assertions like "more people died in Late August 2005 in New Orleans than the previous years, and this was due to the 40 year old Virgin being show in the Cinema, ignoring the fact there was a fucking great hurricane around the same time", attributing such to Cunningham et al is pretty scurrilous.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: They walk amongst us

"Should we be funding any claimed "professional" suggesting treatments that are known to be no better than placebo, but cost more than any standardised placebo treatment?

My answer is no."

An excellent question and response. Unfortunately, my experience with medical professionals is that they will unthinkingly prescribe completely ineffective treatments. A recent example:

Almost a year ago, I had a cardiac resynchronisation device implanted in my chest. Post-op, I was in quite a lot of pain, mainly arthritic. The nurses refused to allow me to take my usual anti-inflammatory medications (naproxen (a prescribed NSAID) and curcumin as advised by my pharmacist). A nurse also told me that the doctors had decided I could only receive a 2.5 mg dose of oxycontin, rather less than what was needed.

What I was offered instead was Panadol Osteo which is paracetamol, but because the word "Osteo" occurs before the word "Panadol" on the box and costs a lot more than ordinary Panadol it must be good. The nurse also claimed it was "extremely effective" for arthritic pain. According to The Lancet only 4% of patients can detect any difference in arthritic pain level when using paracetamol but I'm not one of them.

Around one third of people who take placebos (believing them to be medication) will experience an end to their symptoms. And that's a rather better result than 4% wouldn't you say?

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: But seriously though folks....

"Our current ways of dealing with cancers are very effective."
Really? A few years ago I had cancer of the bladder. This was confirmed when a urologist used a flexible cystoscope to look inside my bladder. He told me that I would be admitted to hospital within 30 days to have the carcinoma removed. When I didn't receive any communication from the hospital regarding the procedure, I began telephoning to ask when it was to take place. Each time I was told to wait for the letter I would be sent. On the the third occasion I was told to stop telephoning and asking about a procedure I had already received.

What makes you think writing down that a procedure has taken place when in fact it hasn't is "very effective"?

Pompous Git Silver badge

"I never thought you get just get it in honey and spread it on toast"
Watch out for ingesting rather than inhaling. Easy to OD...

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: They walk amongst us

"Does that bullshit work on a broken arm?"
Dunno. Perhaps you could ask my last remaining friend who just died. He took Vioxx on the advice of his physician and had five heart attacks in quick succession. You'll have to pray to him for his advice though...

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: They walk amongst us

"Personally I'm not convinced by the theory, but many people report positive outcomes."
Definitely with you on this. Not just people who report positive outcomes, livestock too. I once asked one of my goats whether it was psychological and she denied it ;-)

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: They walk amongst us

"As for homoeopaths, they are wilfully negligent as they prevent people seeking proper medical attention in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence that homoeopathy is just the placebo effect."
You will have to provide evidence for that before I will believe it. First that homeopaths do not also prescribe allopathic interventions. Second, that there's something "wrong" with placebo effect.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: They walk amongst us

"My bullshit-o-meter just hit 11. Congratulations, that's rare."
And your links to contrary research are... non-existent. Congratulations, my bullshit-o-meter just hit 11,000.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: They walk amongst us

"the harm is thus in causing the victim to delay seeking proper medical care, sometimes until it is too late."

Perhaps you should read the analysis I linked to earlier:

"Cunningham and colleagues summarise their review of research assessing the effects of doctors' strikes on mortality, finding that four of the seven studies report mortality dropped as a result of medical industrial action, and three observed no significant change in mortality during the strike or in the period following."
As a, internationally famous statistician remarked to me once, the worst thing you can do for your health is follow a doctor's advice.

Pompous Git Silver badge

"not a jar of honey which would be an Melittological cure?"
I suspect it's the herb, not the honey. I've been channelling Bob Marley lately...

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: They walk amongst us

"Makes you wonder how homeopathists gets away with it ."
Er... because they don't knowingly cause, or attempt to cause, harm and death to other people.

"... when doctors strike, the scientific research shows that patients stop dying."

Why Do Patients Stop Dying When Doctors Go on Strike?

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: But seriously though folks....

"many of our current ways of dealing with cancer including chemotherapy are sadly often not that much better."
Like this twat you mean? Doctor defends chemotherapy treatment as 'reasonable and proper'
"... the final report into Dr Grygiel found he had given inadequate doses of chemotherapy to more than 100 head and neck cancer patients at St Vincent's."

The beast is back: Reborn ekranoplan heads for the Arctic

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: There is already a consensus that the arctic will have trees

"the ice cap already melted in 2013 or is less than than ever before"

Arctic Ocean temperatures at various depths. Temperatures are actual and 13 month running mean. The only part of the profile showing increased temperatures are below 1200m. From 100m to 1,000m temperatures are declining and SST is steady.

Global Marine Argo Atlas

Put down your coffee and admire the sheer amount of data Windows 10 Creators Update will slurp from your PC

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: "T he owner of the documents agreed to the privacy policy.." (sic)

@BongoJoe

Precisely. I own very few of the documents I work on; they belong to the authors of those documents. I merely manipulate them so that they can be handed off to a bureau for film, or more often these days for printing direct to press. It's worth noting that the documents I hand off don't belong to the bureau either.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: oh horse sh*t

"Really? How else can you get good video performance (especially memory-intensive 3D performance) without getting close to the metal?"
By using a decent video adapter with a decent driver. Unfortunately, most can't afford such and it's those lower end devices that create instability. I still have my first professional video adapter acquired when NT4 was the go. It's a full length card fully populated with VRAM for 8-bit colour and cost if memory serves $AU3,000, somewhat more than the 486 PC it was in.

The Microsoftie at the presentation of NT4 immediately prior to launch expended a considerable amount of effort explaining why MS had moved the video subsystem due to performance complaints from NT3.x users.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Solution

"Hardcore professionals? Its a game FFS..."
Korea's Lee Jae Dong made $US519,086.72 from his first 52 tournaments. Is that really just a hobby income compared to what you make, or are you just a wanker?

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: oh horse sh*t

"In the 30 or so years I've worked with MS products, I have never once received a coherent explanation on what causes repeat crashes."
Nearly always it's poorly written drivers for the hardware. While understandable at the time, giving the video subsystem direct access to the kernel in NT4 was a bad move.

I have also come across badly designed motherboards that resulted in unstable Linux as well as Win.

Oddly, the most stable windows machine I have ever come across is Mrs Git's ageing Macbook.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: How bad is the chinese verison

"only rich people can afford to buy non spy on you os's like Mac OS"
What a strange world you inhabit Blotto, where "only rich people can afford" something that's free.

Pompous Git Silver badge

"a bit mardy."
Great googly moogly! That's the first time I've seen the word mardy in print. Me Mam used to call me a mardy-arse bugger when I was a lad. Makes me feel all... nostalgic or something...

Londoners will be trialling driverless cars in pedestrianised area

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Glad I'm not a pedestrian in London

"Being hit by a bike is preferable to being hit by a car in every conceivable circumstance. :)"
I'd rather not be hit by either, frankly. A friend who's confined to her electric wheelchair pointed out to me that while she is restricted to a maximum speed of 10 km/h, there is no speed limit for cyclists using pedestrian footpaths.

Bear in mind that a major cause of death in the elderly is falling. [18.5% of all external causes of death in Australia in 2010]. It's hard to imagine a collision between cyclist and pedestrian not resulting in a fall. I also note that the footpath I use where I am most frequently terrorised by cyclists is also frequented by young children.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Glad I'm not a pedestrian in London

"Or just not happen at all?"
'Hell Ride' cyclist fined $400 over man's deathI couldn't find a link to the incident in Northern Tasmania not very long ago; we're a bit backward here ;-)

IIRC that pedestrian also took a day or so to die. I'd definitely prefer to die quickly than slowly. But then I've experienced the preamble to a slow, lingering death before and have no wish to repeat it.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Glad I'm not a pedestrian in London

" If I was to pick something to hit me at its average speed I'd pick a mostly squishy lycra clad human over a car any time."
However, if it kills you, you are just as dead as if it had been a motor vehicle. Indeed, I suspect that since the injuries inflicted by "a mostly squishy lycra clad human" would be less severe, then the dying could very well take a lot longer.

It's 30 years ago: IBM's final battle with reality

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: "beta" period where peopel cold download the "beta" for free

"In 1990 not many could download software"
Back then I had a 300 baud modem to connect to Pegasus Networks. A rough back of the envelope calculation tells me that the approximate cost of downloading Win3.0 would have been $400. I cannot recall it occurring to me in those far off days to DL software. It was log on, read incoming emails as they downloaded, and immediately log off.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Too much credit

"MS had a contractual moratorium on selling MS-DOS at retail for 10 years with IBM. This expired and MS released MS-DOS 5 for retail sales."
B-b-b-b-ut that can't be true. Shirley MS are responsible for everything bad in computing... ;-)

Pompous Git Silver badge

Thinking back...

As I mentioned in an earlier post to this thread, being able to continue using the computer while a print job was rendering would have been a very great boon in publishing. When we heard that you could do just that very thing under OS/2 Warp, The Git decided to suck it and see.

No matter what I tried, OS/2 flatly refused to install on the testbed machine. IBM refused to provide support because the testbed machine wasn't an IBM. So I never got around to purchasing CorelDRAW! and PageMaker for OS/2. Many years later, I discovered that the reason OS/2 Warp refused to install was because the hard disk was "too big". "Big" hard disks were de rigeur in publishing as document file sizes tended to be large. Itty Bitty Minds presumably thought itty bitty hard disks were good enough for those too stupid to purchase their hardware.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: OS/2 Desktop virtualization before it was cool

"It's a shame Microsoft was able to blackmail IBM into discontinuing OS/2"
Say what? Are you crazy?

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: IBM what could have been

"Windows 95 was distributed to end users as an "update CD". It would not run unless it detected an installed Windows 3.x or was presnted with the first W3 floppy disk. It would also accept the first OS/2 Warp 3 floppy disk."
That's because Warp included a full Win 3.x license.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: OS/2 and PS/2 Memories

"THAT is what killed it. NOT making it available for CLONES. When 'Warp' finally released, it was too little, too late."
A friend who was a developer at the time says the main thing that killed OS/2 was the cost of the SDK: over a $AU1,000. BillG was giving away the SDK for Windows at computer developer events.

Pompous Git Silver badge

"Since operating systems aren’t an end in themselves, but merely a means to an end... the advantages of OS/2 were pretty elusive."
Not really. It was far from unknown in publishing to have to leave the machine rendering a print job because it couldn't do anything else at the same time. Being able to continue working while printing would have been a blessing, but had to await WinNT.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Too much credit

"swap this for the 8088 to get a 20% faster machine that could also run CP/M software (with suitable loader)."
Even betterer, it could run Z80 code, though I never got a round tuit. The extra speed was welcome though :-)

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Too much credit

MS-DOS was never free. Unless you stole it.
Only two of the many computers I've owned came with MS-DOS, most were without an OS. Since MS refused to sell DOS at retail, most people did just that; they stole a copy of DOS. A much smaller number of us purchased DR-DOS and reaped the benefits of an arguably better DOS than DOS. Especially if you also ran the 4DOS command processor.

OK... Red wire or black... *Clickety* You've emailed the schematic? Yes, got it! It's opening. And... WHAT? NO!

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: What is considered an acceptable bandwidth ?

"I have a 1.7 Mbps download, 0.4 Mbps upload connection."
I nominally have 10 Mb/s DL and 1 Mb/s upload. My problems start when I have 0 bps for both.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Annoying

"There is nothing more annoying than your internet cutting out​ when "
No, there are far more annoying things than that. Like the shopping website that won't allow you to purchase/access the product you know they have (Coles Supermarket here in Oz), ABC iView that fails to find the show to stream that they have just been crowing about being available on iView... And so on...

Microsoft wants screaming Windows fans, not just users

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: I rather like Windows 10.

"I did not, at any point, claim that Windows 10 would suit all needs, or that it was the perfect incarnation of a completely fault-free OS - because such a thing has never existed, in all the 35 years or so I've been working in this wonderful industry of ours."
But you did claim it was "just an OS" which is manifestly untrue. No other OS I have run has deliberately used up all of my Internet bandwidth to no useful purpose, or replaced working bits with non-working bits. Not one and I've run an awful lot of different OSs over the decades.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: I rather like Windows 10.

"Going back to your friend's sign cutter as an excellent example, why do they have to run Windows 10 on that machine, right now?"
They didn't want to and that's the point. MS did its level best to force the upgrade. In my case, they pushed three copies onto my computers using up all my Internet bandwidth. Why would I need 3 additional copies of an OS that was neither wanted nor needed?

"My point about talking to the supplier is about the correct aiming of ire - if their drivers don't work on Windows 10, that is down to them to fix, not Microsoft."
The video driver supplied by MS didn't work on my machine. The same happened to a colleague. He replaced it with a driver from the manufacturer that did work. The very next update from MS replaced the working video driver with the one they supply that doesn't work. What is it you don't understand about this? I'm not anti-MS, far from it, or at least anti-windows. Most of the software I run is Windows software. What I'm anti is my computing being forcibly disrupted by MS because they don't approve of my running W7.

Alabama man gets electrocuted after sleeping with iPhone

Pompous Git Silver badge

"Yes, but before smartphones it was hard to find someone sleeping with a lamp, an electric fire or any other electric device..."
Don't get out much then?

If you're looking for a powerful sex toy which doesn't lose oomph mid-play, why not check out our mains-powered vibrators?

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Bah!

"Fake physics. Sad."
Have an upvote...

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: I was hoping for more snarky comedy

"With ladders it's also advisable not to sleep on them."
Or clothes lines...

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Zombie! Help! It speaks!

"From the Oxford English Dictionary (you, or your local library need to be a subscriber) which is the standard by which all other English dictionaries are judged."
No, you don't need to be a subscriber; you can purchase it. I purchased the computer version ages ago and more recently Mrs Git purchased the dead tree version for my birthday. Otherwise concur...

Trump sets sights on net neutrality

Pompous Git Silver badge

@ Voland's right hand

Судья выходит из своих палат, смеясь. Коллега подходит к нему и спрашивает, почему он смеется. «Я только что услышал смешную шутку в мире!» «Ну, давай, скажи мне!» Говорит другой судья. «Я не могу - я просто дал кому-то десять лет на это!»

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: I'd equate Trump to Hitler but...

"Hitler loved dogs."
Eva Braun was not a dog. The dog is on the right...

Eva, hubby and dogs

Reg now behind invisible HTML5 Bitcoin paywall

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Nearly

"I thought it was my eyes due to some medication at first and hesitated to comment."
Ivabradine (Coralan) certainly has that and similar visual FX. Somewhat akin to LSD visuals, but it's no fun having to take it to keep my heart pumping...

Pompous Git Silver badge

"wasn't there one just the other day about a bunch of countries on this side of The Atlantic demanding secure encryption with a convenient back door?"
No worse than a bloke I once worked for. He wanted new ideas, but only "thoroughly tested" ones.

New plastic banknote plans now upsetting environmental campaigners

Pompous Git Silver badge

"Cotton is cellulose. Linen is lignin, that's why it's more durable."
Wrong. Both are cellulose. Cotton fibres are narrower in diameter and shorter in length. Line (fibres that make up linen) is much longer and thicker. Lignin is what you don't want mixed with your cellulose when making fabric or paper. It weakens them.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Re:What then? No banknotes?

"Why not stick with the paper (cotton) bank notes we've had since, oh, the end of big white fivers I duppose, and AIUI nobody minded them? "
There you go! And I thought they were made from hemp paper from one of about one dozen mini-mills globally. They're mostly in Asia and the European Union and produce an estimated 120,000 tons of hemp paper a year. Most is used for cigarette papers, but a substantial percentage is added to art paper, paper for bibles* and hygiene products.

*The Gutenberg Bible was the first major book printed on moveable type almost six hundred years ago. It was printed on hemp paper.

Indian Business Machines? One-third of Big Blue staff based there and Bangladesh

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: IBM == Indian Bollywood Movies

I'm shocked! I always thought it meant Itty Bitty Minds...