Interesting Links for 18-01-2013

[andrewducker]

• Mobile operator 3 are censoring political satire as if it was porn.
  (tags: censorship uk phones )
• Some impressive tech came out of this year's CES. I'd like to try at least four of these.
  (tags: technology thefuture )
• How do you manage geeks? (It turns out, a lot like, well, everyone else.)
  (tags: geeks management )
• Dysaethesia Aethiopica -

Comments

[tobyaw]

I noticed a couple of years ago that Vodafone’s “content control” blocked most wine merchants’ web sites as being adult content. It stopped access to Berry Bros, Lay & Wheeler, Virgin Wines, and Majestic Wine. On the other hand, Tesco wine wasn’t blocked.

Thankfully my employer was happy to remove the content control on my work phone.

[gonzo21]

Well, if the pound does go off a cliff, the Tories are finished, the electorate won't forgive them for that in time for the next general election.

[danieldwilliam]

It’s the consequential impact on inflation that would undue them in those circumstances I think.

First the hit to credibility as the AAA rating goes and the pound falls then impact on prices for food and energy and holidays that unfolds over the following 12-18 months before the income effects from extra exports kicks in.

[gonzo21]

That statistic that damns their claims for reducing the deficit is going to be problematic for them too, we've had all these cuts to spending, and the deficit is still going up? Something is very wonky somewhere.

It's really going to lay bare the true horror of Thatchers principle that the country could make a living in the service sector.

I saw Vince Cable speaking some sense a few months ago, he said his department had a plan to move the country back towards a manufacturing base, but that this plan was likely to take 5-10 years at least, so people just had to be patient.

[philmophlegm]

The claims for reducing the budget deficit are, as you say, somewhat damned by statistics. But the idea that "we've had all these cuts to spending" since the last general election is, I'm afraid, a myth.

Total government spending was £681 billion last year*. In 2009 it was £621 billion. Certainly the rate of increase has slowed (in 2007 it was just £544 billion and in 2005 it was £488 billion), but that's not "cuts to spending", that's "not increasing spending by as much as it was being increased a couple of years ago". In fact, I can't see this as anything other than "government spending is still out of control".

* http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/spending_chart_1980_2015UKb_12c1li111lcn_F0t

[danieldwilliam]

The corn ethanol vs photovoltaics helps to confirm what I’ve long thought - if you can get efficiency of 10-20% and plug that straight into the appliance you are going to beat something with single digit efficiency and which requires a distillation process to access the energy.

I’m a little unhappy about more efficient photosynthesis through genetic engineering.

First off - it’s such a key component of plant competition that I find it hard to believe we could improve on it significantly and still remain with in the structures of plants.

Secondly - if we can then I’m a bit worried about a super-efficient plant growing all over the world.

[alitheapipkin]

Corn ethanol is a crappy biofuel. And when he says improving the efficiency of photosynthesis is a pipe dream, he means the chancing of it happening are basically nil in our lifetimes. Genetic engineering has not proven to be the magic bullet plant scientists thought it would be. (And speaking with my ecologist's hat on, plant competition is a hell of a lot more complicated than just the efficiency of photosynthesis. )

[danieldwilliam]

I absolutely believe you when you say plant competition is more complex than photo-synthesis efficiency.

I’m imagining a world where nettles or wild micanthus say were twice as efficient at photo-synthesis as every other plant and thinking that doesn’t sound like a good place to be, all other things being equal. I’d be interested very much on your insight on this because I’m sure I’m over simplifying.

Agreed on corn ethanol. When the carbon reduction figures started coming in at really low I sort of lost interest in it.

That’s what I understood when he said pipedream.

[alitheapipkin]

It isn't a good place to be no, but current GM plants don't seem to be showing signs of producing super weeds AFAIK - without actually checking the literature, which I admit I'm not up to date on given I'm not working in the field anymore and was a soil rather than plant scientist anyway.
Even plants do not live by sunshine alone. Nutrient availability, pollutants, selective grazing pressure etc etc can have big impacts, and taking over bare ground very successfully is very different from invading an existing stable plant community.

Also, we already have super weeds to some extent - look at japanese knotweed for example. A lot of these issues depend on whether these plants are already native or not.

In short, it's complicated and I could look stuff up and write an essay for you but I need to get back to work and that isn't my job anymore :)

(Also, sorry about stating the obvious re: pipe dream, I misunderstood your comment about it and am an expert at stating the obvious!)

[philmophlegm]

Sterling is probably artifically high at the moment anyway because we have a central bank willing to buy bonds and also that the UK has been seen since 2010 (for political reasons) as a safe haven. However, since those political reasons were all about belief that the UK had a government that would bring some sense to public expenditure (i.e. reduce it), and that has singularly failed to happen, the UK's debt situation is a) one of the worst of the major economies and b) not likely to get better for the forseeable future, especially with the wrong election result in 2015

[hirez]

Ha. Well that's O2 off the list of potential employers. Patronising twat.

s/'geeks'/'women'/ and see how it reads...

[andrewducker]

Having worked in both geek-heavy organisations and more balanced ones, anyone claiming that geeks _aren't_ somewhat different has a massive hill to climb as far as I'm concerned.

[hirez]

Right. But having management-boy there come over all David Attenborough about this mysterious tribe of 'geeks' isn't helping anyone. I get the distinct impression that it's someone from a Widget Factory trying to divine the existence of Film Crews from first principles. (http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45776/why-do-business-analysts-and-project-managers-get-higher-salaries-than-programme/45814#45814)

[andrewducker]

You are aware that many people don't interact with that many geeks, and thus have to be told about them, right?

I work in a geek context right now, but whenever I stick my head out of it into the rest of the company I encounter people to whom geeks are just baffling, and they have no idea what to do with them.

Having someone say "In the main manage them the same as you do everybody else" is actually really useful in this context.