* Posts by GeordieSteve

9 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Sep 2018

Your job was probably outsourced for exactly the reason you suspected

GeordieSteve

Out sourcing will come, but it will not be as simple as companies hope.

I have been writing code for over 40 years and in my earlier days I always thought, sooner or later I would see my profession outsourced to countries with lower wages and tax burdens, but here I am still hacking away. I am not saying it will not happen eventually, but over the years a common theme to out sourcing has not been with lack of cheaper talent abroad but the lack of mentors. Over and over again I have seen projects where the work out sourced has failed because the younge talented engineers may understand the syntax of coding, but fail to understand the complexities of the projects environment, the hardware, and their customers market and needs. Managers who have no appreciation of the technology, tend to think development is like it is in hollywood, sit someone in front of a screen and 24 hours later they will have solution in their hands. In reality I have met 2 engineers I would describe as having exceptional talents, with the rest of us at best may having some idea of what we are trying to achieve. In the end a typical coder spends 10 percent of their time producing code and the rest of the time googling solutions to the problems which arise as the work proceeds. Which is where the mentors come in, they can provide direction and ease the search for enlightenment.

UK celebrates 25 years of wasteful, 'underperforming' government IT projects

GeordieSteve

Ex ITSA employee

I worked for ITSA (Government IT division) at the time of the privatisation. While working for ITSA we had a philosophy of 'get the product right and stable', after privatisation the consultancies which took over had a philosophy of get the customer to pay the bills and product was secondary. If I learnt anything from working for consultancies its that it's all flim-flam and contract management. I would strongly recommend that any company that has to develop product, put your own team of engineers together. Believe me the consultancies will take you to the cleaners.

How many times do we have to tell you? A Tesla isn't a self-driving car, say investigators after Apple man's fatal crash

GeordieSteve

Who was responsible

From reading the article I get the impression the blame lay everywhere but with the loose nut attached to the wheel (or not in this case).

Surely if these vehicles are that dangerous, then would the Insurance companies not price them off the roads?

The peelable, foldable phone has become the great white whale of tech

GeordieSteve

Saw that coming

When I first saw these phones, my first thoughts were about the durability of the display. After all plastic is not renowned for being hard wearing, and once the plasticisers evaporate and UV light has done its work, I could not imagine the devices lasting long. Must admit I thought the Huawei with its external display was going to be the first model to be crucified, but then time will tell.

RIP Dr Peuto, Zilog and Sun's bright SPARC

GeordieSteve

I had a lot of experience with the Z80, and I never actually work with this device. I believe at the time Intel's and Motorola migration to the 16 bit market involved using lookup tables in ROM for the instruction sets, where as people I knew who worked with the Z8000 said it was still based on the old discrete logic which result in a awful lot of bugs in the hardware, which were difficult to work around and repair. These issues resulted in them migrating mainly to the Motorola family, which at the the time was the preferred platform by engineers. (Damn IBM for there decisions).

Sorry, Samsung. Seems nobody is immune to peak smartphone

GeordieSteve

Phone upgrade

Does this mean I will soon be able to get rid of my trim phone and afford a smart phone?

Facebook spooked after MPs seize documents for privacy breach probe

GeordieSteve

For a long time now I have felt that Europe needed its own OS's, Search engines, Social media etc.

The thought that something like a young person posting something stupid online and thirty years later that post being used by a foreign government (currently probably the US) to black mail them to me is a real threat to Europe's security. I am surprised that the political classes in Europe have not considered such dangers to their independence.

Oi, Elon: You Musk sort out your Autopilot! Tesla loyalists tell of code crashes, near-misses

GeordieSteve

No way ready!

Until I have seen lorries and coaches using this technology on the motorways for a couple of years would I even trust it under similar circumstance.

When trying to develop firmware for such environments it is easy to overlook the noisy environment that the code is trying to interpret and basically over simplify the problems (especially if you have no real appreciation of the technology, that is probably you Mr Musk and the media in general).

We really are no where near trying to emulate a human response to an environment, we may perform the odd trick, but what the human body does is still beyond us.

I think of what we do as a wave, that hits our senses and propagates through a very complex filter and feedback system and on to the muscles etc. Neural networks are an approximation and probably the closest we have to a solution, but they are generally large, slow and basically an unknown quantity at the moment.

I feel fairly confident in saying that autonomous vehicles will happen, but the environment they work in will need to be structured to support them.

First Boeing 777 (aged 24) makes its last flight – to a museum

GeordieSteve

Flew to the states on BOAC and Pan-Am 707-120's

Really old.