According to the Lloyd’s List (don’t ask why I have a copy to read):

The Belgian dredging giant Jan de Nul offered to bring an early end to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill by deploying its fallpipe vessel Simon Stevino, which has a much broader pipe than the funnel currently being used by BP. However, a law that restricts coastal traffic to US built and flagged vessels has frustrated their offer of help.

Barrack O-fuck-face, set aside the protectionist piece of shite Jones Act for them to help. Either you want this cleaned up or you don’t, personally I don’t give a shit, but stop beating BP for not being responsive enough when you won’t let people with legitimate offers of help actually provide it.

Something else that also tickled me today was that people are wanting Tony Blair to run BP. Obviously not British people as they remember what a shit job he did running a country. Maybe when Barrack O-fuck-face doesn’t get elected he can have a job in one of BP petrol stations, cleaning windscreens or something.

On a lighter note this new iPhone game has an amusing slice of hypocrital irony. There are specific terms in the Apple developers guide that say you cannot hate a specific entity (human or company) and since every bad thing that has happened to the US since September 11 is BP’s fault, this is obviously a case of Apple siding with the BP Blame Storm community. Or… (for the hypocrisy bit) you are not allowed to club seals but you can drown ducks… why?

Oh how I laughed. To be fair though England did play pretty well, and I guess we must have just felt sorry for the Americans so we had to level the score for half time. On the plus side you could argue that England did score both goals in the game.

The thing that annoys me the most though… On the radio yesterday afternoon, a Californian girl said that the final score would be 1-1 and that America would be happy with that, while the Brits would be gutted. First of all, Californian, second of all, Girl… what does she know about football? But she was right.

And so down goes my theory that Football would be a good way to resolve disputes instead of war. Nevermind.

I have been silent on the issues unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico but I can no longer sit idly by while BP take s a right royal shafting by everyone with a shaft to poke. While I have no doubt that BP is big enough and ugly enough to take care of itself, and I have no doubt that they will survive this, there are a few things I would like to get off my not unsizeable chest.

Ok, first thing to say is that someone fucked up. I don’t think anyone is disputing that. What annoys me though is that everyone apart from BP is running round, falling over themselves to get out of the way and point at other people. BP is also pointing fingers, but at least they are trying to fix the issue; not to mention the fact that there were no BP employees on the rig that blew up, BP didn’t build the rig, or pipework, or the Blow out Preventer, in fact I’m surprised the US administration and Obama-fuck-face himself hasn’t blamed BP for being self centred in trying to save as much oil and gas as possible so it can save money through its resale.

I have a really radical idea… Why can’t we fix the problem first, then go about blame storming?

So, the Paxman (knob) Show last night was a little enlightening. Apparently the US secretary of tea and cake wants to hold BP liable for the losses all oil companies will incur because of the moratorium on deep water drilling that the US government is imposing. I was speechless for some time after this laughable comment, well it would have been hilarious had the guy not been serious. I think that next on his list is blaming BP for the second world war, killing so many people with the 2 atom bombs dropped on Japan, and keeping aliens a secret from the world. Fucknut!

And what about O-fuck-face. I didn’t really like him when he got in, I mean he had some great ideas, but since he got in he’s done very little except annoy the American people – a notably worthwhile past-time in my book. This is his way or at least showing that he’s on their side I suppose. One of his best quotes was around him firing BP’s Chief Executive Officer – Tony Hayward. The interesting thing here is that while O-fuck-face is in charge of a country, he has never run a company and personally, I think that shows as the guy can’t lead a horse to water if they were both on a 4 meter wide island with no trees on it in the middle of a fresh water lake. Fucknut!

I can understand why the Americans prefer Lord Brown over Tony Hayward as they love soaps so much. Lord Brown was a great orator, and to be fair, Tony Hayward is not. He does come across as quiet and unassuming, and this is possibly a bad thing in a crisis. I suppose the Americans would rather he stood up and lied convincingly? I’m not really sure how that helps, but it’s a strategy I suppose. Kind of like the strategy of putting an American in Tony’s place: sure, an American would understand the issues facing the US, but Americans are not really known for their tolerance of other nations, and America is only about 25% of BP’s deployment and accounts for 33% of its oil sales. If BP were to sell all it’s US assets it would be amazingly rich for a while, but the US would have a real problem. It already imports some 4.4 million barrels of crude and petroleum products per day (against 5.3 million barrels per day made in the US) and imports would increase significantly until Exxon Mobil could replace all the bespoke/specialist BP kit with their own. Fucknuts!

The best one yet is that the US is trying to get an injunction to stop BP from paying a dividend to their share holders worldwide. What’s the US going to do, invade the UK to try and force its laws on us – Guess what America, we actually DO have weapons of mass destruction, so fuck you – bring it on you slags! Fucknuts!

Once BP, the few small outfits that have volunteered, and the other outfits that have been forced to help actually fix this, then the investigation into the reasons why it occurred will find the truth. I think that BP will take the moral high-ground and not go around saying they told you so (read that as spineless). BP has been sorely let down by everyone, by it’s own chairman and board, by the UK government, by the government of the country it’s trying to help, and most interestingly their peers in the oil industry who could leverage that help for years. Fucknuts!

The thing that keeps amusing me through all of this is that BP is throwing cash at this issue like it’s going out of fashion, and people still want more. There’s O-fuck-face saying that BP will be held financially accountable, yet BP has already paid way in excess of financial cap put into US LAW by an American administration in order to save an American company in the 90s. Fucknuts!

A quick note to all BP employees, I hope your CEO doesn’t step down becasue of this, and in a few years you’ll be able to walk round america with your heads held high. For anyone who gives you crap about working for BP, the justified response is “Go fuck yo mama!”

bigoted lady

O.k. the daily mail may have an agenda here, but still, all Gordy had to do [was probably not call her a bigot in the first place but] stand by his words, and I’d have voted for the guy with the spine…. but then he went and apologised.

Spineless, illiterate twat!

What with Clegg wanting to disband the NHS, rock on Tories!!!

Why the science candidate is standing for Parliament

Until the comment about “Wouldn’t you want to know that decisions are being made with by people who ‘do so from a position of scientific understanding’”

Now, see, it was just them and us to start with, god vs science, but then you had to throw in some politics and now I’m aggravated. Let me start by saying that I’m a firm believer in the majority of science having a PhD myself, but probably not for the reasons scientists usually bang on about. Predictability and provability. Lets discuss.

Predictability
So the scientists argue that they can predict with a fair amount of certainty the outcome of a lot of physical problems. For example the complicated science of sending things to orbit Jupiter or land on the moon (assuming we did actually go there). I agree this is pretty radical thinking, but then what about the prediction that if you go to Las Vegas you’re gonna end up poor. Or, if you play chase the ace or find the lady, you will loose. Ahhhh I hear you say, those last 2 are rigged. And, there are people who win the lottery or huge at craps… but they are the exception… and an exception to science?… Given this example of space, you’d think it’d be a pretty simple thing to land a little robot on the surface of Mars, but we only seem to be in the high 60% success range for that.. only just above pure chance.

Provability
God doesn’t exist because no-one can prove that he does. However science is real because someone has proved that stuff does what it does because… well, just because. I can’t prove anything about quantum mechanics because I don’t have the equipment to do it**. Therefore I have to trust that the guy telling me there is an equation that proves it… there’s some faith here!!! I can prove the existence of god in the same way. Take some LSD you’ll see him for yourself, and it’s only the scientists that say LSD is an hallucinogen, and what you see is not actually real – of course they’re gonna say that.

** Oh, also they are called theoretical particles for a reason!

Beliefs
So, having just proven that science is a belief, it is no better or worse than religion. People follow it because they can prove to themselves to their own level of satisfaction that it is the right thing to do.

Politics
Surely no-one cares how you make your decision, whether it be science, ouija board or divine voice; the people will let you represent them if they believe you have their best interests at heart. Scientists will agree with you, those where science has abandonned them will follow the other guy.

So, Mr PhD Brooks do your thing, represent your constituents and stop belittling your opposition and their beliefs, unless that’s all you’ve really got. Oh, and stop using your publication ability to further your political intentions. I’m sure that’s illegal somewhere. Get back to writing about science.

Bootnote: If people wanted value for money, they’d stop shelling out for stupid reports and sack half the middle management in local government… just for a start!!! Alternative therapy does help a lot of people… way more than the visible side of politics ever did!

Anyhow, this story amused me no end today.

As an ex developer and business analyst of some 20 years the story starts with he age old hatred of the sales guy, and I immediately sided with Gerald. The story continues with the (also age old) story of half a dozen workable solutions being shot down for some idiotic reason or other and then finally ending up with a massively complex and costly solution… and the sting in the tail.. for a single user.

This reminds me of a recent project I was partly involved in. We had spend the best part of a year redesigning our server infrastructure to reduce the complexity and remove the incompatibility of multiple software applications interfering with each other. I was very proud of the solution – it was almost beautiful in its simplicity and resilience. A month or so later my utopia was sullied…

The management had announced that they had reviewed many Management Information applications and decided on one, and now that all the hard work of decision making and procurement had been done, all we had to do now was to install it and implement the needs of the business – apparently this should only take us a couple of weeks.

Hmmm….

Systems – Ok, can we please see your requirements?
Business – Errrrrrm, what’s that then?

Systems – Can we see the systems specs you need to run the software?
Business – Errrrrrrm, We’ll give you the contact details of the vendor.

<Sigh>

The really niggling thing was that we already had an in-house reporting tool that could connect to ANY data source and report on it. All that was needed was a simple input front end and some graphics on the output, which could be done with some macros in excel – an entire process that could have been performed in 1 month by 2 people. Instead we ended up spending several dozens of thousands of pounds on licensing a product that only just kinda outputs the same mess that we previously had just not quite as fast, and several months by a cast of dozens to implement the underlying implementation that we had to coerce because the application didn’t support what we wanted anyway.

The only reason I can see that this was done was that one person wasn’t able to use Excel.

But it’s even worse than that… the existing system aside, there are several well trained and qualified people around that ‘one person’ that would have cherished the opportunity to update the excel version at no real cost and in a fraction of the time.

You have to love “business”.

I dunno, maybe it’s worth the sofa surfing porn raid… you still have one hand free to pull yer keks up when the missus walks in, and there is no more squinting at a tiny screen, so it’s probably good for perving without the cloud of macular degeneration and the cost of surgery.

Phanbouy nirvana??? hmm… I think even the hardcore among us will be a little sad inside. I think that really it’s just a Newton version 2.

http://www.wired.com/news/images/full/newton_f.jpg

Maybe the third version will be better – you know, like the iPhone was.

…are actually weakly genetic freaks and shouldn’t be allowed to breed.

But that also defines most Americans, French and people from Essex, but they seem to be allowed to breed. Another double standard perhaps?

Enter Mechdrew.

I am not attempting to bypass Mechdrew’s excellent set of tools or his process and chances are my post is now out of date I did have to alter the process a little bit so I thought I would clarify what I did for prosperity. BTW, I didn’t want dual boot, and so don’t ask me anything about it.

The mini 9 does not come with a CD ROM drive, but I had an external one, and this process seemed the easiest. There are processes for doing it all via meory stick, but again, my choice was the CD method. The Retail edition of Snow Leopard is Dual Layered… 7.5GB… make sure your CD can read it.

You will need a retail edition of OS X (I used 10.6 – Snow Leopard anything else and go find another process). This will also nearly fill the 8GB internal drive, I’d recommend an upgrade with a Runcore SSD – they are cheap and immensely fast. While you’re at it, buy more memory… You can never have too much memory.

From mechrdrews download site, download the following components.

• NetbookCD 0.8.3 RC4 ISO (and burn it to a blank CD)
• NetbookInstaller 0.8.2 Final (and put on a memory stick)
• NetbookInstaller 0.8.3 RC4 (and put on a memory stick)
• About this Mac (and put on a memory stick)

Yes, get both the NetbookInstallers – this is important! 0.8.4 may fix the bug that means you need to do this this, but for now… get them both. If you do not, you will not be able to reset your BIOS to disable legacy USB support which in tern will mean you will not get sleep to work properly at the end of the process.

So, boot off the NetbookCD. When you get to the chameleon boot loader eject the disk and slip in the Snow leopard DVD. wait a few seconds then press F5 (fn + G) when the list of items change, select the “Mac OS X Install DVD”. And you’re off.

• Select your language and press Continue.
• Press Continue on the Welcome screen.
• Press Agree.
• Go to Menu Bar>Utilities>Disk Utility….
• Select your internal drive and delete anything on it.
• Create a new volume formated as Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
• Press Apply.
• When finished, closed Disk Utility.
• Select your newly-formatted drive, press Continue.
• The process then continues.
• Installation will probably get to the end and report that it has failed. Again, this is normal, just press Restart.

I had to then boot back off the NetbookCD but I eventually got to the Mac Desktop (after following the steps to install a user and connect up to my local wireless)

Plug in your memory stick with the tools above on them. Open the zip file with NetbookInstaller 0.8.2, then one that has unpacked, run it. Do the same with 0.8.3. Then finally run the About this mac package. This is the moment of truth. Shut down your system.

Disconnect your CD drive and power on… it should get to the mac desktop.

Right, now you need to ensure you have disabled “Legacy USB support” in your BIOS, so reboot and go into the setup, then let the machine reboot again. Everything (bar the mic and the SD slot in my case) should now work. You may need to BIOS tweak to get my issues fixed, and I’ll keep you posted.

For interest, I used a retail copy of Snow Leopard 10.6.0. Mechdrew says to not use software updater however that worked for me.

I work for a large company that prides itself on being a “diverse and inclusive” employer, and even has a “Code of Conduct” for all employees that means you can get the sack if you are in any way ‘negatively discriminant’… positive discrimination though – that’s finer than the finest fine thing on a fine day in Fineville!!

So the company I work for, somehow managed to get a ‘womans’ network. Why? Are we no longer supporting our “Code of Conduct”? Or are women still so inadequate that they need support?

They probably get round the ‘Diversity’ issue by supporting pretty women, ugly women, fat women, skinny women and lesbians – and get round any ‘inclusion’ issues by “inviting” men to come along.

Or, are women playing on the “Code of Conduct” has the acronym “COC” so does not apply to them?

Because of the economic situation, our company also has the slogan “Spend company money like you would your own”… If this hypocrisy is allowed to continue, I’m gonna start buying shares in Brantano cuz it looks like we may be taking them over soon.