February 2012
5 posts
1 tag
Capitalism - the charge sheet
It is becoming more and more obvious that capitalism isn’t delivering as advertised. Post war the free market provided the western world with an ever increasing standard of living. But the wheels are coming off in a big way.
Despite decades of growth, the American middle class hasn’t increased their standard of living in the last thirty years. I remember living in the US in the...
2 tags
What happened to ICI
When I left university in the 60’s, my first job was with an industrial giant; Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) in Billingham. They were a truly massive company. Factories in the north east, Manchester, Cheshire, Ayreshire, and the home counties. There were also overseas plants. It employed tens of thousands of people and was one of the largest companies in the UK.
Where are they now?
...
2 tags
Militant atheism - why?
The universe is fantastic. The sun is one of hundreds of billions of stars in the milky way. I will repeat that. Hundreds of billions. The milky way is one of hundreds of billions of galaxies. Hundreds of billions times hundreds of billions of stars.
Stop and think about this for a few minutes before you read on.
The universe is about fourteen billion years old. The earth is about four and a...
What is leverage?
You have probably heard of businesses being ‘leveraged’ and maybe you are not sure what it means. I first heard of it when I started working in the 60’s s it is not anything new. Here is a little primer.
The way it works is simple. Say you have a £1000 to invest, and a business that you can invest in will give you a five percent return. So you give the business £1,000 and after...
2 tags
Justifying executive pay
Executive pay has clearly got out of hand. It is not just a question of rewards for failure, the rewards for success, or even non-failure are clearly unjustified. Now I have no issue with someone who starts a business, risks all his or her own money and eventually makes mega-bucks. Anyone who has started a business knows that at some point you will be putting your whole lifestyle on the line,...
August 2011
1 post
2 tags
Come on Co-op this is Pitshanger Lane
I just went to the local shop in an unsuccesful attempt to buy chick peas. Why am I getting uptight about this? The area we live in is a sort of poor man’s Hampstead. Strong community spirit and a middle class population centered around a shopping street, that supports a gastro-pub, cheese boutique, up-market wine shop and so on.
In the middle of this are two Co-ops (yes, two) who...
March 2011
5 posts
2 tags
How can you get a good education from a school run...
The Everyday Champions Church is one of several Christian groups trying to start a free school. To quote from Pastor Evans “Creationism will be embodied as a belief at Everyday Champions Academy, but will not be taught in the sciences. Similarly, evolution will be taught as a theory. We believe children should have a broad knowledge of all theories in order that they can make informed choice.”
...
3 tags
What they don't tell you about petrol prices
The message you get about petrol prices is that the prices are unsustainably high these days and the government should do something about it until they get back to normal.
Here are the facts. Check this website. Brent crude prices have been steadily increasing for the last twelve months. Today’s price of $116 is only about $3-4 above the trend line. I can’t tell you what will happen...
3 tags
Pity poor LLoyds
We went into Santander recently and there was an open space, a couple of sofas and some cashiers. We stood about until someone wandered out and we asked who we talked to about our question. She waved at the sofas and said to wait and someone would see us. So we waited. Other people were pointed at a telephone to call their call centre or a PC to use their website.
If I wanted to open an...
2 tags
Unfair to medieval thinkers
I despair when I read stories such as the recent one about an Imam in East London who was forced to make a grovelling retraction, because he received death threats after he suggested that there might be something in the theory of evolution. The attitude of the misguided individuals who make these threats is often compared to that of the medieval world.
Well, I have to say that this is an insult...
February 2011
2 posts
4 tags
The mess that is digital photo processing with...
Anyone will tell you that you should shoot photographs in raw format. That means the data straight off the sensor is stored together with the settings in the camera at the time you took the shot. Then software on your computer re-assembles it on request. Other formats (Like JPEG) do the assembling in the camera and once the omelet is made you can’t unscramble the eggs and fix any...
1 tag
The state of British education
The interviewee sat opposite me looking nervous. He was an IT graduate with a 2.2 or as I believe it is known a ‘Desmond’. Taking a tip from a friend of mine who had interviewed a lot of IT graduates I asked him “Tell me, what part of the course did you do best at?” he answered “Discrete Mathematics.”
In a feeble attempt to get him to relax I tried a joke...
January 2011
1 post
Deepwater commission report →
BP got a lot of stick for the Deepwater disaster. A lot of it is well deserved. But the report shows there were very serious faults on other companies parts.
Halliburton tested the cement and every test up to when the cement was used suggested the mix was unstable. They didn’t tell BP. Unbelievable.
The Transocean blowout preventer should have kicked in with a deadman system as soon as...
November 2010
1 post
500 quid for an android tab - what a rip
Tesco are selling the Samsung Android tab for £529. What a rip-off. They think they can charge the same prices as Apple? No way. Unlike Apple there are going to be dozens of competing product in the new year, once Gingerbread (Android 2.3 or 3.0) is released. I expect the price point to be around the same or less than a netbook, which is about the same level of technology - say £300 for early...
October 2010
4 posts
A monster gingerbread statue being unveiled at... →
It must be true then. The next release (Gingerbread) of Android is coming soon.
What happened to Chrome OS?
A year and a half ago my prediction for this year was that netbooks would be the big growth technology. Small, light laptops with extended battery life but relatively low power. So you would need a small efficient operating system and systems like Ubuntu and Chrome OS from Google (both Unix based) or even Windows 7 would fit the bill.
How wrong could I be. The smart guys at Apple figured out...
The Terminator - what will I do with it?
I have my eye on my next mobile phone. The Motorola Terminator due out next year. This will have a dual-core ARM chip. Yes, two processors, count them, just like a leading edge PC from a few years ago.
It will be running Android 3.0 allegedly, which runs on Unix to it can take full advantage of the multi-tasking possibilities of a dual-core system. Unlike some other phone operating systems...
Why a Kindle?
I have just received my new Kindle despite the fact that it uses a proprietary format for the books; and you can only buy them in one place (Amazon). Normally that would be an anathema but there are good reasons.
The main reason is the cost of the books. If I bought the Sony ereader from Waterstones they would have charged me as much for the books as the paper copies. This is despite the...
August 2010
1 post
In Richmond today: certificated diamonds.
I am getting increasingly annoyed by people using ‘less’ rather than ‘fewer’, ‘systemic’ rather than ‘systematic’ and now ‘certificated’ rather than ‘certified’. Repeat after me - the language is evolving, the language is evolving… I knew an American who talked of projects coming to fruitation.
April 2010
1 post
4 tags
Humax PVR9200T - how not to handle technical...
The Humax PVR9200T is a Freeview hard disk recorder. When I bought it several years ago it was easily the best thing on the market. Two tuners, large disk, good features, a great piece of kit I recommended it to friends and have found it very reliable - until the global retuning exercise last year when the Freeview frequencies were all changed and everyone had to reset their tuners. It turns...
March 2010
1 post
2 tags
Windows file sharing - It's a mesh
I have been working on a presentation on my laptop, but Barbara was out yesterday so I thought I would work on the file on her somewhat larger screen. Simples, yes?
I just go into control panel on my laptop and enable file sharing. Then I use windows explorer to navigate to the directory the file is in, click on ‘share’ and indicate share with everyone. Then on Barbara’s PC...
February 2010
4 posts
2 tags
Another disaster waiting to happen
As we sleepwalk into one crisis after another: pensions, peak oil, government debt, and so on, another is buried on page 29 of the Monday Guardian. During the boom years a lot of people had a really good wheeze. They bought household-name companies such as the AA or Boots by borrowing huge amounts of money from banks with a view to tarting the company up and flogging it on in a couple of years...
1 tag
Google Buzz
Google buzz (buzz.google.com) is a new blogging system with entries added to your Google profile. Will anyone use it? I seriously doubt it. Google are way behind the curve on this one.
4 tags
Will I pay to look at the New York Times?
The venerable New York Times website is going to be behind a paywall next year. I guess you will be talking about a few dollars a week which is pretty small to access some of the best reporting and comment on the web. Will I do it?
Probably not. The Guardian is pretty good too and I will read that more.
Newsday erected a paywall on their website three months ago at five bucks per week. They...
3 tags
iPad - wrong wrong wrong
I have been on holiday so missed the launch of the iPad. What a disappointment. Single tasking, not running Unix, back-lit screen. What use is it?
Serious computing - no.
Ebook reading - no, not with a backlit screen. Real ebook readers have an electronic ink screen which you read in ambient light and importantly uses battery power only when you flip pages, so the batteries last for weeks...
January 2010
4 posts
4 tags
Is the world ready for a mobile Internet device
Mobile internet devices (like the LG GW990 or the Lenovo Skylight) are based on a couple of arguable assumptions:
The Internet is ‘always there’.
Everything can be done in the cloud.
I don’t buy either of these. Yet anyway.
The Internet is always there - as long as you don’t mind paying through the nose, not to mention taking out a second mortgage if you are roaming...
Dell slate - doubtful
The Dell Slate is has a 5” touch screen, a SIM slot and runs Android. A mobile phone with actually being a phone.
I don’t see it.
The Apple islate due out in a weeks time sounds more interesting. But will it be an ereader with electronic paper or a tablet computer with a regular screen. We wait with baited breath.
Personally I want a proper computer with a useable screen,...
Startup advice in 3 words
Dharmesh Shah’s excellent posting on the onstartups blog is advice for entrepreneurs in three words. He has 48 of them, and commenters have added many more. There is gold here:
Sales fixes everything Watch your cash. Never fudge numbers
and so on. Read - enjoy - think.
2 tags
Lenovo Skylight - looking good-ish
The Lenovo Skylight looks like bits of the future to me. A 10 inch screen, flash memory (no disc), less than 2 pounds, thin, and 10 hour battery life.
I don’t understand why it is allegedly shipping with a custom Lenovo Unix distribution (it is ARM based so no Windows) and not something like Ubuntu. I doubt there is a big future for this.
Review here.
December 2009
2 posts
2 tags
The Power of Yes unfair to Monte Carlo (vs...
I went to see The Power of Yes yesterday. It is a very good explanation of the financial crisis as explained by a playwright – David Hare. I recommend it – the two hours flew by. However there was one small item I worried about. There was a comment about ‘Monte-Carlo methods’ being used by AIG which got a cheap laugh which I thought unfair.
To explain (please bear with me I will get to the...
Trying out Tumblr
Matt O’Riordan just posted a blog entry telling us why he is blogging on Tumblr. So I thought I would give it a shot.