Posts by NiteDragon

Re: So utterly convincing

There's a surprising amount of humans that can get by in life by clearly having even less than half a brain. If they have less than 1/4 they get to run the country or become executive team members.

Re: Honestly

But then Microsoft couldn't add hits to Bing (so they can pretend people use it).

Re: Gatekeeping

In all honesty universities don't call themselves woke normally - in the rare times they do it's to poke fun at the right wingers who hate education/research in those times between having their life saved by vaccines, hospital treatments, drugs invariably using telecommunications networks and tiny computers to tweet about it over the world wide web.

There is always research going on in improvements to process - it might not be 'high profile' but it is there.

Tax money... Yeah, that's a can of worms, depending on your country the headline figures shown in the papers are there to make a point - once that's split 'per university' and then via departments and courses (considered of value) - not a lot of that is really going to research.

The majority of research funding tends to be private or directed by a 3rd party to solve a specific problem.

There are further political pressures in all countries - suffice it to say, the governments of the world would rarely back making the lives of hobbyists easier (Certainly not the current one in my country).

Currently, as you've identified (and as mentioned elsewhere in replies) - there are some really nasty chemicals involved in fabrication processes, frequently other things you can't get unless you're a lab with good reason and then things like rare earth materials to change the properties of materials in tiny ways. In domestic markets there'd always be the fun of someone dumping the left overs down the drain or in the normal waste - some of this stuff survives water filtration, so that'd be fun for all the family.

In short, it's not quite as simple as Universities 'gate keeping' the tech - you'll find a lot of gatekeepers, most of them for a good reason (currently).

3D printing of electronics is already a research target (primary application in space and future long distance exploration). So someday yes - it's likely chips will be printable if they are not already... Whether those chips still use materials that are restricted is somewhat partially down to the audience for it all (more research will be done if it's something everyone wants to do, that's how capitalism works) - but we can all hope we can someday, it's just not today.

Re: @cjcox - What??

I suspect they need to reply at almost 1:1 for linux related comments or a little bomb goes off. It's like a really tedious IT version of the film Speed.

Re: Surely...

You've clearly been subjected to the same sort of meetings I have (where Marketing somehow manage to get a say in IT strategy)

Re: Yes please...

You can do a form online to make them aware you don't use BBC services or watch live TV (that last one's a bit cheeky, but part of the rules). I haven't had any unwanted harassment since cancelling at all.

Re: "showing Redmond is taking seriously the creeping advance of Apple"

Believe me, the though has occurred while doing a walk of shame (laptop open while running) because windows decided to update instead of shut down or, you know, ask if I have 20 minutes to spare.

"The WHERE clause on the SQL statement that chose the target cohort was clearly not calculating the credits correctly resulting in the wrong cohort being sent the automated email"

Alas in the system they use the vendor requests that you code in a vendor-specific language (called SRL; a semi-spawn of a language called uniface) which is far slower and prone to handling nulls etc in strange ways - also when I tested it, its performance was horrendous.

It makes coding for the system more painful than it needs to be, and increases the grey hair count way more than even the worst SQL I've dealt with. On the plus side as the system in question is apparently market leader - if you can deal with ignoring how badly it is coded and how clunky it is... You're pretty much assured a job in a lot of Universities...

I think one O/S across devices can work - I just don't think a company that as arrogant as Microsoft can do it.

You actually have to talk to customers and listen, do iterative builds - realise privacy is actually important in some people's lives; rather than pretend to engage and then "know better" and think "we're important - they will learn how to do it our way".

Now I fancy a Pie. <sigh>

Re: Just fucking leave already

It's unlikely to work - but it will keep friends of various politicians in new cars and big houses for a while.

AC - quality rant; can I ask where you moved to? I also feel a bit like it may be a good point to step off this deluded elitist little island.

Okay - today if asked who I am; I'm going to say "I am Slag".

Should brighten up a dull Friday.