The clue is in the name

A lot of EU Skeptic hyprocrisy in the news this week with Obama's visit.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36120808

Boris Johnson apparently called Obama or the US position on the EU referendum hypocritical.
But of course Boris and some of the UK national press fail to point out that USA is an acronym for United States of America (US - United States being a shorter variant).

Previously EU skeptics pointed out that they didn't want to see the EU become a United States of Europe, this basically implied that they viewed the United Kingdom to be the equivalent of California or Oregon within the United States.

So where does this logically take us then?

Clearly prominent EU skeptics did not see the UK as being the equivalent of the US, rather they saw us as being a small 'State' that was being sucked into the United States of Europe (USE ??).
But now Boris and co are creating a logical fallacy that contradicts the previous stance by saying that the UK is the equivalent of the US and should not allow it's laws be determined by what they now see as a foreign government.

Suddenly we have gone from being a state within the USA to being the whole of the USA!

This is the sort of game ideologists play because it is the only game an ideologist can play. It's like using a metaphor in the design process of a product, eventually the metaphor becomes broken and (for instance) the use of the word 'Windows' to describe a computer interface no longer has the same meaning or context. The fact is a political ideology is doomed lie to and mislead the public in order to survive, otherwise it must destroy itself.

It should be pointed out that the EU is effectively the result of a post WWII project that was started in order to combat the propaganda of Soviet Russia (and other Communist states) during the Cold War and to create a peaceful movement of unity within Europe in order to prevent war in the future between its nations. Public information films during the 1950s all across Europe were designed to emphasise European integration and peaceful coexistence, it was a 'capitalist Western' project.

The fact is the US is practicing it's independence and saving on bureaucracy costs by negotiating a single deal with a big block of nations. That is exactly what Boris Johnson and co would expect from a nation, reducing costs and putting itself first. So why is he whining? If he thinks that is wrong, then he should be campaigning to stay in the EU.

The youth problems of Waterlooville continue

The groups of youths were congregating again in Waterlooville shopping centre this evening. In my last blog post about this a commentor was suggesting that I should be more tolerant.

This evening there were various groups in Waterlooville and a shouting match occurred which attracted various adult onlookers and people just strolling through town on a sunny evening.

I did take a photo, but my phone camera isn't very good so there is no detail. I would think some of them had been drinking, the girl who was shouting at other kids was also on a mobile phone. How much is 'social media' and mobile technology to blame?

Do their parents know what they are upto?

http://lovelywaterlooville.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/pidgeon-and-youth-problems-in.html

Retirement is big business

 Not one

Not two

But three large 'retirement' home complexes are currently being built at Waterlooville.
But only one of them is in Havant Borough, due to the perverse nature of British politics the other two are in Winchester City Councils domain. Winchester being 20 miles away.

Wellington Park - Urban Park Project

A nice example of Pinus Pylonus behind the Urban Park Project sign.

There has been a lot of tree and shrub planting next to the Wellington Park housing development recently. This magnificent Pinus Pylonus is near the road and I managed to take this superb photo while the Sun was out. This isn't the tallest I have seen, but it is a good specimen for the area and it's great that the council and developers decided to keep it. You can see to the rear and right of the photo an area of shrubs has been planted.

Support Fully Charged

Roberts back with the first Fully Charged video of the year and a request for support:



https://www.patreon.com/bobbyllew

Computers in the old days...

Interesting BBC article about computers in schools and colleges in the 1970s.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-35890450

Although I agree with the general picture the article creates, it does not reflect my experience.

Quote Kevin Murrell, co-founder of The National Museum of Computing :

"We write in languages that are akin to English which are converted into binary by the machine. For 99.9% of programmers, maths isn't an issue at all because modern computers do so much more."

That is just rubbish. A good understanding of logic and mathematics is essential for producing good quality 'code' of any sort, whether it is some simple script in an application or some complex computer application. If you don't have good knowledge of these subjects then you will produce products that are difficult and expensive to maintain. On top of that, poorly structured scripts and programs will cause problems at a later date.

"Today's programmers can afford to be less precise as "the sheer brute force of modern computers gets you through"."

 Really??!??

I have had to educate my young and inexperienced colleagues in the importance of boundary testing of software. Why? Because a lack of accuracy and precision results in serious errors such as a worker paying to much tax, a student getting the wrong mark in an exam or a jet airliner falling out of the sky. The idea that precsion is not important is a fallacy.

What was my experience?

I and two student friends programmed a Star Wars game in Basic on the local FE college mini computer at about the same time the first Star Ears film was released.
Later at university we all had to write programs in Fortran using punch cards, then later at university I used a computer similar to 'Research Machines' to write a program in Zilog Z80 assembler language and it was designed to control a sputtering machine at the university.
Then from 1982 onwards I worked with assember and high level languages. Contrary to the article, assember language (which is a slightly higher level than machine code/binary/hexidecimal) was used throughout the 1980s because it allowed low cost electronic systems to be developed. High level languages at the time required to much memory and processors were still to slow to run them.
It wasn't until the late 1980s that high level languages could replace assembler completely and this was becuase of faster processors, better electronics and cheaper memory.