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Government

Submission + - One IT contractor's take on the healthcare debate

Submitted by Madman
Madman writes: I'm an American living in the UK for the past few years so I have a unique perspective on the US healthcare. I've experienced both the US private insurance based system and the UK state-run healthcare system and I do feel that people in the US are missing the point.

I'm an IT contractor but in the past I have had a several permanent jobs both in the US and UK. In the US one of the primary concerns anyone has is healthcare for themselves and their family. Insurance is a huge concern for those who are self-employed and in many cases the costs involved for private coverage are exhorbitant enough to prevent people from starting their own business. And if you lose your job you have the unenviable choice of either paying way over the odds to keep your old policy or taking a huge gamble and going without. I know American Ex-pats who can't move back to the states because they have pre-existing medical conditions and would be denied health coverage. Can you imagine being exiled from your own country because you have diabetes or MS? What does that say about America?

In the UK it's completely different. If I lose my job I don't have to worry about being covered until I get a new one because I pay into the system and therefore I'm entitled to the benefits. I won't have to worry about being denied cancer coverage because I forgot to mention I broke my wrist when I was 8. When looking for a job I don't have to think about insurance, I can chose the best job for me. I can start a business, quit work for 6 months and write a book or iPhone apps all without a second thought.

Some people are saying that state-provided healthcare makes one less free, but that couldn't be farther than the truth. For me it's given me freedom from worry and the freedom to pursue my own career goals.

I've seen both sides and I wouldn't take the US system over the UK system for all the RAM in Taiwan.

Comment Contact Intech in the UK (Score 1) 122

by richard.cs (#30375406) Attached to: Interactive Computer Exhibits For Ages 3-8?

http://www.intech-uk.com/folders/frontpage_welcome/

I haven't been there for a number of years but last time I was there they had a large number of technology related exhibits plus a lot of general science related ones, all aimed at children. They build (or at least used to build) most of it in a workshop on site and seem to have a reasonable turnover of exhibits - as a child I would often go there and find new things that had been added since my last visit.

Offhand I can't remember many specific examples but I believe they had a “network” based on routing coloured balls representing the data, an exhibit on batteries where the children could compare the outputs from cells made with different metals (copper, steel, aluminium, zinc) and electrolytes (vinegar, cola, etc). There was also a pile of parts that if assembled according to the diagram would create a steam engine which could be run on compressed air, a demonstration of Pythagoras' theorem using volumes of liquid and so many more which I have forgotten.

Submission + - I wanna be a developer 1

Submitted by Madman
Madman writes: In my career as a network/security architect I've managed to develop some decent perl coding skills after having written everything from billing systems to network management tools to scripts that write custom excel reports, whatever was needed at the time. I'm enjoying the coding side of my work more and more and I'd like to learn a programming language that will allow me to shift my career into more of a developer type of role, but I'm not sure which one to go for. I don't want to spend a great deal of time learning a programming language only to realize just as I'm getting good that it's old and busted and I should have gone with the new hotness so I put it to the slashdot community: If I want to be able to write both web and mobile apps in a language that still is going to be used many years down the line what should I learn?

Comment How 70s! let's use hdls instead of 64 voice links (Score 1) 136

by Madman (#29951294) Attached to: Transpacific Unity Fiber Optic Cable Leaves Japan

surely using uncompressed telephone calls as a measure of bandwidth is a bit outdated? 4.8Tb is 75 million 64K uncompressed telephone calls. c'mon, get real!

Instead let's measure bandwidth by hdls units, 1 High Definition Lost Season is a pretty impressive measure of bandwidth, and by my reckoning 4.8Tb is about 100 hdls/second. That's a big pipe!
Editorial

Submission + - 7 reasons against cloud computing (tetsui.net)

Submitted by
Madman
Madman writes: "I've written this op-ed piece on my blog: http://tetsui.net/gdblog/2009/07/22/7-reasons-against-cloud-computing/

All the talk has been so about cloud computing this, the cloud that, and I'm sick of it because it's rubbish whether it's paid for or free. Here's why:

1) Murphy's law:
Any application that fundamentally depends on internet access or a hosted service will not work when you really need it. Let's use Google maps on your mobile is a prime example. It's a great app, one which I use. It's pretty fast and it works well with the built-in GPS on my phone. I use it when I'm going somewhere and like a backup, but I would never, ever rely on it for primary navigation. You walk through a tunnel or under some power lines, and next thing you know you get a pop-up saying you need to re-connect. Not good if you're lost or in a hurry. Can you imagine the horror when the presentation you were just about to set up becomes unavailable because of a local provider problem? Anyone who has been through September 11th (I have) or 7/7 (I had that day off thankfully) will realize how quickly communication can break down. If I'd been reliant on a connected application to find my way out of ground zero I would've been screwed. It's not just in disaster scenarios: just a power outage, a sever blowing a diode, or an idiot with a backhoe can cut you off from your data.

2) Cloud computing gives other people control of your data.
In order for a cloud app provider to make their money they have to make you as dependent on them as possible, so when they balance the need for you to be able to use your data independently with their need for profit guess which side the bread will be buttered on. With all the disclaimers and legalease you sign (or click you've read when you haven't) they are basically saying that your data is theirs to treat as they want. Worst case is that they give you a service and then change that service to extort money out of you. That app they said gives you access to your data locally? Well, it just got locked out until you agree to pay a monthly fee. That supposedly open format your documents are in has been changed to a proprietary encrypted format. You think it can't happen? It's only a matter of time before it does.
I'm not expecting much evil to be honest, but I do expect widespread indifference and incompetence due to the nature of the beast. Web companies make a profit because they make tiny amounts of money very, very often and they keep their costs as low as possible. Automation is the order of the day and your chances of getting human help are slim at best.
The only one with a vested interest in your important data is you, not them and you should never surrender control of it, EVER. What happens when they lose your data and they have no backups because someone screwed up? Remember that agreement you signed, the one that absolves them of any responsibility?
A good example of this is iTunes. It's not a cloud app but it demonstrates the problem perfectly. It's handy and it works, but they require you use their formats and their products and if you ever want to change you have to resort to 3rd party hacks of questionable legality and dubious origin just to gain control of your own music! Imagine if that was your tax documents or that novel you've been working on!

3) cloud computing lessens your power of choice:
On my PC I can decide to upgrade an application or not, and if I don't like it I can chose another application. Not so with cloud applications. Once you're on it the provider makes these choices for you and there isn't much you can do about it. Sure, it may be great now but what happens when they start to suck? What happens when they change the feature that made you chose that app in the first place? It's not likely to be an easy change to a new app.

4) security concerns:
One of the best hacking bangs for the buck has got to be web applications services. Look at the Twitter debacle where sensitive company documents were leaked out because a hacker guessed a username and password. If this hacker had broken into a PC he/she would have had to do some serious digging to get that level of sensitive information whereas in this case everything he/she could have wanted to find was all neatly organized, all that needed to be done was pull the files. One of the selling points of cloud apps is that they are available from everywhere, you can use any web browser in the world to access them, so this means ANYONE in the world can try and hack them and if they do that can spell disaster for the individual or organization. Take facebook for example; in a recent case a jilted boyfriend hacked into the facebook account of his ex and did enough personal damage to her to get sent to the big house, and that is just a social site!
It's not just the individual cases, these cloud app providers have huge targets painted on them for anyone looking to steal personal data. Why go for an individual account when you go for the whole enchilada? There's no reason you'd know it either as the app provider might a) not know about it or b) be trying to cover it up until after the annual report is announced. Again, they have a vested interest to protect themselves and not you.

5) centralized apps mean centralized risks:
back in the days of mainframes and timesharing any problem that effected the system impacted all the users on that system in a big way. One hour of computer downtime could mean 100 hours of lost productivity which is why when the PC came along it was an enormous leap forward. At last a computer problem would only effect one person! Now we're talking about reversing that trend and going back to centralization when history has shown what a bad idea it is.

6) Bandwidth is the least reliable but most vital part of the equation:
Let's face it, unless you live in South Korea you won't be able to get internet access in every toilet, forest, and sub-basement, therefore you have limited access to your data. If I need urgent access to my medical records and the airport web access is down I'm out of luck. Furthermore mobile web access is extremely expensive, especially when travelling so why would you want to depend on it?

7) we don't need it:
My phone is many times more powerful than my PC was 10 years ago and has an enormous amount of storage. I have a music collection and a fully-fledged mobile documents suite. The whole thing syncs to my PC so if I lose the device I'm not screwed. My home PC has a bucketload of useful apps, and since it's behind a firewall it's somewhat protected. Any vital files I can keep on a truecrypt-protected USB stick and carry with me. I'm not the only one with these capabilities, they are becoming ubiquitous with more power and storage in the palm of your hand every year. With all this capability why would anyone want to use an application that is insecure, is expensive or sometimes impossible to connect to, and where you are utterly beholden to the provider of the service when there's no benefit? If computing power was a commodity then I could understand but bandwidth is the commodity in this model. The main selling point is the weakest part of the equation.

The web's a fantastic medium with a huge variety of extremely useful applications and rich sources of information, and I think there's plenty of good stuff coming down the pipe. I do however think that there's no technical reason whatsoever for cloud computing given the proliferation of powerful portable devices and tiny portable storage, and there are significant disadvantages due not only to security and reliability concerns but also about the control of your data. It's like putting all your eggs in one basket and then giving it to someone you don't know to carry who will only let you look at them.

Ubiquitous powerful computing has completely eroded any benefit of centralized applications when it comes to non-social or non-collaborative sites. What we need is better mobile applications that will increase productivity on the move, and better standards to improve interoperability rather than some kind of browser app war with no benefits to the user."

Comment Credit crunch means go for the masters (Score 1) 834

by Madman (#27903983) Attached to: Go For a Masters, Or Not?

I think at this moment in time you should go for the masters unless you have a good position waiting for you after graduation. The job market is not looking great right now but should be looking good in a year or two when you'd be getting out, and a masters degree will set you apart from the crowd who didn't get one and spent 2 years doing their level best trying to get people to super-size their meals while desperately hoping for their first real job.

When I graduated with my masters the tech boom was in full swing and if I'd gotten my masters I would have missed it, so back then I would have said get straight into the job market. Now in a market contraction it makes sense to go for more qualifications.

I personally think that for the majority of tech jobs a masters degree is irrelevant as the vast majority of what you will do you will learn on the job. You can't learn realistic project management in school, or how to deal with management. These things you only learn in the trenches.

Comment feedback into conventional media (Score 1) 383

by Madman (#27742741) Attached to: Twitter Considered Harmful To Swine-Flu Panic

It's not terribly surprising that twitter is full of uninformed bullshit, what do you expect? It's essentially web diarrhea as it encourages people to gush the first thing that comes to mind. Informed discussion takes actual thought and dare I say reasoning, neither of which lends itself to the twitter format. It's just background noise.

What concerns me is that the conventional media is taking their cues and sometimes even stories from things like twitter. Hearsay from unmoderated and unverified sources suddenly becomes fact. A case in point was yesterday the BBC said that the Mexican government was underestimating the crisis on the basis of that's what people said in an online forum! They are treating these probably uninformed and definitely fearful anonymous people as "feet on the ground" and using their statements when they can't even begin to verify the veracity of their statements, or that they are even local to the event.

I'd never state that the media used to be a paragon of virtue and accuracy, however they used to have to work for it. Now they are trawling forums and twitter and treating it as gospel, which is bad for everyone if the news becomes completely inaccurate they will destroy their credibility and if that happens what sources can people trust?

I'm not saying close twitter down, if you like it then go wild, fill your boots. I'm just saying that anyone who uses it as "factual" data should be dragged over a bed of gravel, dipped in vodka, and then rubbed in salt.
Emulation (Games)

ScummVM 0.13.0 Delivers New Adventure Games 69

Posted by Soulskill from the ever-expanding-selection dept.
KingofGnG writes "The classics, by definition, never go out of fashion, let alone if they are the graphic adventures of past decades. The preferred tool of true adventurers is ScummVM, software that works as an interpreter between data files of such adventures and modern operating systems. 6 months after the release of version 0.12.0, developers have now delivered a new main release of the virtual machine, which includes novelties both for the interface and supported games."
Linux Business

Submission + - SCO files chapter 11

Submitted by Madman
Madman writes: According to The Register SCO has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. "With less than $10m cash left to call on, SCO said that Chapter 11 protection and reorganization would protect assets as it addresses, ahem, "potential financial and legal challenges"." See the full story here.
Biotech

Genetically Modified Maize Is Toxic — Greenpeace 655

Posted by kdawson from the here's-to-your-liver dept.
gandracu writes "It appears that a variety of genetically modified maize produced by Monsanto is toxic for the liver and kidneys. What's worse, Monsanto knew about it and tried to conceal the facts in its own publications. Greenpeace fought in court to obtain the data and had it analyzed by a team of experts. MON863, the variety of GM maze in question, has been authorized for markets in the US, EU, Australia, Canada, China, Japan, Mexico, and the Philippines. Here are Greenpeace's brief on the study and their account of how the story was unearthed (both PDFs)."

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