Tag: Technology

Naked Capitalism – can you help?

Anybody out there who can offer some support?

Yves Smith is responsible for the Blog, Naked Capitalism.  It’s a great Blog and it must take a huge amount of effort to publish the volume of information that Yves does.

Yves has a problem, read here, an extract from his Post below:

Dear patient readers, this is a bit of sentence first, verdict afterwards, but it is 6:00 AM and I have spent all day and all night dealing with copy edits and am still behind the eight ball and need to sleep too, or my productivity will go from poor to non-existent.

So you get an antidote now, and if you check back later, I will fill in some links for your delectation, and hopefully at least a wee post too.

Sorry about this, I feel bad about neglecting the blog, particularly after the technical difficulties of last week, but the WordPress problems put me further behind schedule. And to be honest, they weren’t just WP.

If you can help or know someone who could, then contact details are here.

By Paul Handover

Lehman Brothers – whoops!

Wonderful article in the Financial Times about the importance of IT documentation!

Unwinding derivatives is a complex task at the best of times. In the case of Lehman, one of the biggest dealers in some of the most complex derivatives markets, this has been even more so. Lehman’s global derivatives book included contracts with a notional face value of $39,000bn and deals with 8,000 different counterparties when it went bust. The derivatives business was actually split into multiple strands, backed up by between 20 and 30 different systems.

Once it went bankrupt, the staff who supported these systems “evaporated”, according to Steven O’Hanlon, president of Numerix, a pricing and valuation company which is working with Lehman Brothers Holding Inc to unwind the derivatives portfolio.

Say no more! Full article is here.

By Paul Handover

The International Space Station

Almost taken for granted by so many of us.

Thanks to Dan for passing me the link to a fascinating graphic that was recently published in USA Today showing the

As seen by STS 128
As seen by STS 128

time-line of the International Space Station.  It has been orbiting above our heads for over a decade!  Do click on the link because you will be surprised, unless you work for NASA, how large and complex the ISS now is.

It’s an interesting to consider what has happened since the launch of the first module, Zanya, on the 20th November, 1998.  Bill Clinton was then President of the USA; Tony Blair had been British Prime Minister since May, 1997.  How times change!

But steadily a group of Nations has worked together to keep this project going and now the end of this magnificent enterprise is within sight.  As the NASA web site summarises:

The International Space Station is a partnership of the US, Russian, European, Japanese, and Canadian Space Agencies. The station has been continuously human occupied since Nov 2, 2000. Orbiting 16 times per day at 17,500 miles per hour 250 miles above the ground, it passes over 90% of the world’s surface. When complete in 2010, it will weigh over 800,000 pounds and have a crew of 6 conducting research and preparing the way for future exploration to the moon and beyond.

By Paul Handover

Planet Earth, just a reminder.

This is a beautiful planet and it’s the only one we have.

Yes, I know it’s not original but these pictures still have a haunting beauty about them.

Just look at our world

Precision engineering

Technology is so much more than bits and bytes.

Recently had the opportunity to visit a factory belonging to Horst Engineering in the nearby town of Guaymas (pronounced whymas), Sonora, Mexico.  The factor manager is an American, Andy Law, who, with his lovely wife, livesHorst 2 across the road.

It is simply ages since I have seen a precision engineering factory at work.  Not only was I impressed but it took me on a long trip down memory lane, with a couple of strands: engineering tools and the British defence industry.

But before the reminisces, a word about the calibre of the young Mexicans working for Andy.  Unlike so many of the locals who one comes across, these bright, young men and women are committed, self-motivated, multi-lingual (Sp/Eng) citizens. It was a treat to observe them and hear Andy speak so highly of them.  Mexico sorely needs up-coming generations of highly capable people.

Continue reading “Precision engineering” →

CCTV cameras in Britain!

Britain’s excessive use of CCTV cameras and the shocking waste of money.

Even before leaving England a year ago, this was a subject that made me feel uneasy, to say the least.

Anyway, a recent article in The Daily Telegraph pointed out just what a complete cock-up this ‘investment’ in cameras CCTV camerahas been.

Britain has 1 per cent of the world’s population but around 20 per cent of its CCTV cameras!  Scary.

And don’t even think about the implications of RFID – Radio Frequency Identification.

G’rrrr.

By Paul Handover

SoundCloud – very cool!

SoundCloud is just wonderful.

If you are into music, and who isn’t, do hot foot it over to SoundCloud.  It’s just an amazing reminder of the power of the web.

Essentially, it makes posting music onto a web site or Blog as easy as, well as easy as this …

Just click on the play button and drift away!

Very, very cool!

By Paul Handover

Cell phones and cancer

Is the mobile telephone industry being honest?

A report released by the International EMF Collaborative last week has some disturbing information in it; that cell phones (mobile phones in Europe) are more likely than not to be a causative factor in some cancers, most notably brain cancers.

That information will not come as a surprise to anyone as rumours have been circulating for many years.  What is driving-while-on-cell-phoneworse (if brain cancer wasn’t bad enough) is a growing view that the cell phone industry may have been trying to skew the results in favour of the industry.  If proven, that sort of corporate behaviour underlines the value of integrous living as the only way of creating a society fit for all.

The International EMF Collaborative claims that the Interphone study, which begun in 1999, was “intended to determine the risks of brain tumors, but its full publication has been held up for years. Components of this study published to date reveal what the authors call a ’systemic-skew’, greatly underestimating brain tumor risk.”

Know of young people using cell phones? Then read more and pass this Post on to them.

Read more about this study

Air Sports

World Aerobatic Championships, Silverstone, England

Yesterday was the last of the three days of the WAC, the World Aerobatic Championships, held, this time, in England.  Had I known earlier then this Post would have been published before the event had finished.

Anyway, guess what has been found on the web?  Airsports TV.  So all those that hanker after this sort of thing, here is your very own TV station.  Want to know more about Airsports TV?  Watch the video below:

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Want more?
Now hang on to your seats!

STS-128 Mission

This always gives me a thrill.

Hopefully, by the time you read this Post, shuttle Discovery will have had a successful and fault-free launch.

Here was how it looked at the time of writing (13:30 MT/20:30 GMT on the 24th)

Shuttle Discovery awaiting launch
Shuttle Discovery awaiting launch

Awoke to find that poor weather has delayed the launch.  Here’s a pic of the bird standing out in the rain last night.

Shuttle in rain

By Paul Handover