Times when I feel old

A few days I was thinking at an event how I was beginning to feel slightly above the average age, and i commented on this to someone.  I justified this with these beauties from my past:

1. As a child I can clearly remember (whilst living in a London suburb), the milkman delivering by horse and cart.  Further he lived in the next street with a stable instead of a garage, and it didn't seem odd!
2. Our house was not centrally heated, we had coal fires in the 2 main living rooms, electric radiators (when we were ill) in the bedroom, and in the bathroom - a paraffin heater.  The fuel was purchased every now and then when the lorry came round, and kids and neighbours would queue up to fill the jerrycan.
3. And i do swear i remember a Frenchman on a bike selling onions.  I do know i remember thinking "it's a long way to go back and forth to get more onions".  never occured to my young self that there might be a lorry round the corner!

I got a rather surprised look!

I know i'm not that old but a lot has changed in only a few decades.  I quite enjoy remembering such different times - how about these happy memories:

• Black and White TV
• only 2 channels on TV
• Just the one phone in the house, and the GPO taking weeks or months to install it
• the test of BST in the winter, and walking to school with free reflective armbands
• the continent of Europe being so far away

what are yours?

Human Rights and Asimov

There's an awful lot of stuff written about Human Rights in this country. The UK Government has enshrined them in law, and there's regularly a load of tosh about them, but also some genuine concerns.

 

Most of these concerns rotate around people being able to exercise their rights without a concomitant sense of responsibility. Things like a killer being released from gaol but not being deported (despite various promises from government at the time), because this might infringe their human rights when they arrive.

 

I think the answer is quite simple. In Asimov’s Robot series he created and spent a lot of time considering the fundamental three laws of robotics:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

You can read more here: Asimov's Robotic Laws on Wikipedia

 

 

But, whilst you do, please note the creation at a later time, of a zeroth Law

• a robot must not merely act in the interests of individual humans, but of all humanity

This principle could easily be applied to Human Rights. Everyone can have their human rights, but not at the cost of the community’s human rights. Thus we can be protected from people who invoke Human Rights without having a care for their social responsibilities.

 

Or have I missed something?

Thank the Victorians for our PC's

Happy Geek tweeted a week or two ago about this article Thank the Victorians for our PC.  I noted it at the time, and wanted to go into more details, but frankly I've not had the time to put into it.  So briefly, have a look - we can thank them for:

• The analytical engine
• The computer program
• Boolean logic
• Data transmission
• Radio communication

Just where would we be without those?

A day in Bradford

You know it's been a good day overall when faced with a 3 hour or so drive late at night in the dark and rain, you crack on, don't stop, and enjoy the drive home (and beat the SatNav prediction by 23 minutes to boot !)

Yesterday was the Black Marble Tech Day;. It was their 9th or so, but my first. I'd decided to go because:

• Eileen Brown was presenting on Social Media in the evening
• They were attempting to summarise the current Microsoft Wave in just one morning
• There were a lengthier session on Azure, a thing in which I have some interest, but I thought a non-Microsoft centred (but Microsoft involved) presentation would be interesting
• And finally, but no less importantly, I would get a chance to hook up the night before with our friend Mark who I've not seen for a while.

So, the morning session was ambitious to say the least, one slide showed in detail the product mix at Microsoft and the goal was go through each area. Currently the slides are not posted, but I hope to link here later. Suffice to say that the icons and text were pretty damn small, and the product mix extensive. That gave me pause for thought on what they would manage to squeeze in. The whole could easily have been turned over to just this one presentation.

What really puts the ambition into perspective is if you take just one of Microsoft's new products from last year. Windows Server 2008 R2. Microsoft have released a Feature Components Diagram, but it's 2.5MB and you probably haven't got a printer format large enough to make it readable! On my 30" screen I can read 1/8th of this chart at a time. So someone bright spark put it onto Seadragon and this works well - it's 13,122 x 7,188 pixels.

So, my point - if just 1 product's new feature set charts needs to be printed A0, what hope has a presented to spin round the entire business platform for Microsoft in just a few hours? To be blunt, none. But I was pleasantly surprised at the presentation - it went through shedloads of information in an informative way, and led me to think a bit more about a few clients and projects I'm involved with (and inevitably I also came up with about another 20 major projects to kick off in the home office).

Lunch was an absolute delight. One of the best I've had at an event for ages. Some companies try so hard to be fancy and impressive. Most of the time, I just want a couple of good sandwiches, made with proper bread. They came up trumps!
The afternoon was dedicated to Azure. BM and Microsoft speakers discussed what's happening with Azure, new business models, and a number of case studies which did more to convince me of some of the benefits - these were specific "I need computing power, and I need it now" examples where, with some process re-engineering, the companies could truly utilise what's on offer.

However, there are still some major issues for me with cloud computing:statutory duties for data protection are a deep concern

• statutory duties for data protection are a deep concern
• robust geo-location of your data
• decent penalties for cloud failure
• the ability to check out as well as check into the cloud

For me, though, we need a major cloud failure (and I don't mean Google Docs doing down for a few hours, or the Sidekick Fiasco. When a major cloud player goes bust I will watch with interest how the user community makes the transition elsewhere, and how the industry supports them. Only after such an event will things mature.

Then finally, in the evening slot Eileen Brown gave a 1 hour talk on using "Using Digital Marketing and Social Media to Build and Maintain your Online Brand". I came to this from a couple of angles - despite the time I've known of and known Eileen, I'd never seen her present, and I was interested to see how my sub-optimal use of Social Media could be improved.

After the hour, I'd emailed myself 10 or so "urgent" things to do. That's close to a record for me! I've got some really useful ideas buzzing around my head now.


Oh, and of course, it meant I spent a day in God's Own Country !!

Updated 30/01/10: Oops, sorry some typos crept, and I've corrected those.