Barry’s Ramblings

Google Ads

I have finally figured out why my Ads do not appear on this web site.

It seems the host “grumpy.boldlygoingnowhere.org” or the domain “boldlygoingnowhere.org” are somehow blacklisted

Facebook will not let me include my blog URL in a status update and Google Ads returns a “403 Forbidden” for the Ads.

So it looks like I might need to get a new domain name!

UK Government to back Homeopathy!

WTF!

The this useless government now thinks water should be given as a medical treatment and should be paid for by my taxes. What next? Replace A&E departments with “crystal healing centres”.

Should the NHS refer patients for Blood Letting as well? What is to become of this once great nation!

Below is the response to the petition. Only 1,629 people signed it, have we all collectively gone mad as a nation!

The new Government considered the findings and recommendations of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee and has published a full response.

The Department of Health will not be withdrawing funding for homeopathy on the NHS, nor will the licensing of homeopathic products be stopped.  Decisions on the provision and funding of any treatment will remain the responsibility of the NHS locally.

A patient who wants homeopathic treatment on the NHS should speak to his or her GP.  If the GP is satisfied this would be the most appropriate and effective treatment then, subject to any local commissioning policies, he or she can refer them to a practitioner or one of the NHS homeopathic hospitals.

In deciding whether homeopathy is appropriate for a patient, the treating clinician would be expected to take into account safety, clinical and cost-effectiveness as well as the availability of suitably qualified and regulated practitioners.  The Department of Health would not intervene in such decisions.

The Department’s response to the Science and Technology Committee report explains the reasons behind its decisions in more detail.  The response can be found on clicking on the following link:

http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_4006368

Good bye Royal Mail ….

“Royal Mail to be privatised” – shocker … Not…

This is hardly news…http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11258649

It has been obvious to all but an amoeba that ever since Adam Crozier took charge that he had been put there to slim down the Royal Mail to allow competition to creep in until it was small enough to sell off. The Royal Mail has been suffering a slow lingering death for years.

I realise that sometimes governments surprise us with what they do, but this one has been out in the open for years.

The next step will be a second buyer will take over from the first. This second buyer will be a Private Equity firm. It will buy it, shrink it, sack a load of staff and sell it on for a profit.

If it survives this long, Royal Mail will then go to a third buyer, an off-shore foreign company, most likely one that does not even do mail, and it will be subject to “efficiency gains”. At this point, or after the 4th buyer has stepped in, the name “Royal Mail” will have gone.

So wave bye-bye to what was once one of the most impressive institutions in the world.

What they will sell off next to raise money for banker’s bonuses, who knows.

If you think this is hooey, where is “British Steel”, “British Coal” etc. The “AA” was once number 1 I think in roadside rescue, they are way down the list now since a Private Equity firm bled them for profits, they certainly lost customer service somewhere along the line..

I despair …

Wanted! Apache Gurus.

OK, I am bored with this problem now and I am appealing for help from any Apache experts!

I gave wordpress as you can see, with the Google Ads widget installed.

When I browse my server at home as http://192.168.1.1/, the ads appear and work fine. However as you can see by the big empty space to the right, browsing using the name http://grumpy.boldlygoingnowhere.org/ the ads don’t appear!

That name is served by DynDNS and is updated by my broadband router in line with whatever IP the ISP has allocated.

How do I get my ads to work?

Transition complete

At last I have completed my server transition.

This blog site originally started life on a Sun SPARC 20 workstation with Solaris 9 installed on it. This workstation was the mail exchanger for The University of Kent until is was replaced, scrapped and I took it home.

The services them moved to an ex teaching centre PC from The University of Liverpool, which had been scrapped, re-used once already as a NetBSD server (can’t remember what for), then scrapped again when I re-installed it with OpenSolaris and it took over from the Sun. Shame really as the RM PC hardware was so inferior in design to the old Sun that I was often tempted to go back to the Sun and ditch the RM, even though the RM was much much faster than the old SPARC.

Now, since Oracle have taken over Sun and OpenSolaris has been killed and it looks certain that Oracle will (in there usual style) charge a pile of cash for anything Sun related, I too have kill off Solaris at home. This is sad and regrettable. I have always been a big fan of Solaris, but I think it’s days are numbered in the hands of Oracle. We are in the firm grip of “IT done on the cheap” which is only serving to further the position of grey commodity Intel boxes with Windows server on them. Especially in organisations that have bulk licence deals and see Microsoft as the “cheap” or “free” option. Every product gets sidelined and replaced by something similar from Microsoft’s product catalogue. This will leave Oracle/Sun, which has always been the powerhouse of database servers (particularly on SPARC), as a very expensive solution. It will only succeed in places where the technical superiority of the combination SPARC/Oracle/Solaris is recognised.

My current home server is an ex teaching centre Dell from Liverpool Uni that I have installed Ubuntu Linux onto. I did a 64bit workstation install, as I sometimes use it as a desktop as well as it being my server. I have found Ubuntu simple to set-up and administer, software is easy to install and there are less conflicts when you want certain Open Source stuff to work together than you get on Solaris where Sun’s shipped packages sometimes get in the way.

After I complete the clear out of the office and make a trip to the dump, I will no longer be using anything Sun at home except VirtualBox on the Mac. And if Oracle start charging for that, it will go as well.

The next upgrade in hardware will be in about 3 years time. Either I will bring home another scrapped PC and build it with Linux, or I might just go Mac and put the whole thing on a Mac Mini. Depends on cost. The more Macs I have at home, the more need upgrading over time!

I wonder how much the staff discount is on Macs if you work for Apple …. Mmmm…

My Amazon Book shop

Some books for sale: http://www.amazon.co.uk/shops/AVIO61PDCLHQF

Flash on iPhone, iPad etc

Nicely put Steve:

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

I have been saying that the PC era has past for ages! The model of PC Tower + Mouse + Keyboard sitting on a desk has gone, or should have!

The word processor for creating printed content is increasingly obsolete in a web world.

The spreadsheet is dead in a world where databases are increasingly easy to implement, in 20 years of using computers I have only see about 2 spreadsheets that really needed to be a spreadsheet. Most were simple tables or databases that should have been done another way.

I can’t understand why it is taking some people so long to see that the world of computing has moved on!

I am writing this whilst sitting in Costa Coffee with a cappuccino using a MacBook Pro. No mouse! No word processor, but a web app. I could equally well have written this same post on my iPhone on the bus.

Mobility and platform independence are the future of computing. They have been for years, but the products have lagged behind.

Windows mobile for instance is no use as a mobile platform. It is a severely cut down Windows look-a-like platform that needs a mouse and a keyboard. The mouse usually in the form of an awkward to use stylus.

I work in networking and hardly a week goes by without someone asking for access to their PC for remote desktop. Why! They clearly need a laptop!

I have recently heard people asking about thin clients. Oh my God! How many years have these been under the noses of Chief Information Officers and they have missed their potential!

And people wonder why I despair of It these days!

Come one people, we are in 2010, not 1980.

Trains

I am going to London for a meeting. Cost on Virgin Trains from Liverpool to London to arrive by 10am and leave about 17:00 is £245 standard class with booked seats on specific trains.

A similar length journey with SNCF, Lyon to Paris can be done for £228 as an open first class! It’s £157 for the similar ticket to the Virgin one. WTF! Virgin first class was something like £489 single, that joke should go in the hall of fame as the funniest this century.

This country is going somewhere! Not sure where but I suspect it’s not upwards!

Dangerous new morons on the block

Please do what you can to help fight the morons at FireBurnDoctor.com.

I have sent them the email below:

I am intrigued by this new and exciting medical breakthrough you have discovered for the treatment of burns. That by using a telephone to ring in some personal details, tissue is repaired and re-grows and pain is prevented.

Could you send me the references to your published papers on this as I am interested to know the biological mechanisms you employ, especially in the case of 3rd degree burns, that cause the re-growth of damaged dermis, epidermis and hyperdermis tissue and how without any intervention you prevent wound infection.

I was unable to search the literature as your website omits to provide the full name and institution for “Medical Doctor Joseph”, so I am unable to read your research.

I do hope you have developed a spectacular new treatment as there are so many frauds around these days that sell fake treatments that prolong suffering or even persuade people to avoid proper medical care completely often resulting in lasting injury or even death.

Yours.

Barry Dean BSc. (Hons)

This is the latest group of dangerous individuals I have heard of. There is bound to be a body count related to this one eventually, which will be especially upsetting if it involves children.

Woo fighting

Please go to http://www.libelreform.org/ and support this campaign.

If we do nothing the woo will take over.

Did you realise that is an American author says something about a Russian person, legal under American and Russian law, the case can be tried in an English court if two copies of the document appear in the UK? It includes on-line information as well!

This is plain silly.