I’ve used MVA as above, EDX also have good Microsoft specific training.

IMO big data is a terrible term. As already mentioned there are relational databases out there that scale to ten’s of TB, if not larger and do not fall into the ‘big data’ category.

When I get involved on a new project and they start talking about Big Data I fall back onto looking at the 3 V’s; Volume, Velocity, Variety

Even then sometimes the problem is still best solved in a relational database like SQL Server or PostgreSQL which both now provide support for designs beyond what most people think relational databases can do. If there really is a lot of data coming in e.g. sensors on industrial machines sometimes the simplest approach is to dump that to a HDFS layer but still use a SQL database to host the data that end users will actually query.

Fascinating subject and is keeping me busy…

I sit on the infrastructure/admin side of the fence so don’t bother me with questions about your mapreduce, R or Python jobs 😉

10/10, how could anyone who is British get any wrong? Those of you with 9/10 should report yourselves to the HM Border Force for immediate deportation. 😀

Minecraft on Pi is not the normal version, it’s a light weight one just for the Pi so it might not do what he actually wants – especially if his mates are on OC or console versions.

Once we put our Pi together as a computer my kids quickly got bored of it – we have PC’s in the house that are unsurprisingly better PC’s.

If you don’t have a PC/laptop then the Pi can get by as that, but IMO it is much better to use it projects where it controls or does something.

@ry33 will do.

The 55 should be fine for all that, my daughter has done some tow paths etc. We discovered the frame was too long for a local pump track and kept grounding on the bumps though.

In my head I still look like I did when I was 25. I saw a reflection of myself the other day 🙁

Where I work now is pragmatic and the rules are mostly balanced. You can wear jeans etc, but not when meeting clients, you can eat at your desk but snacks only, not hot food etc.

I like it. I’ve worked in places where one of the guys was sent home by his boss for wearing navy blue jeans (black jeans were ok by HR), and another where beach wear was common in the summer, and erm, somewhat distracting 😳

My daughter has a frog 55 which is now too small for her. I have ordered her an Orbea MX 24 team. My sons ridgeback mx16 is now on the small side for him, but he doesn’t get on with his sisters frog. I’ve ordered him the Orbea MX 20 Team.

Both rode rented Treks over the summer in Wales off road and loved being on proper mtb tyres. Hopefully I won’t regret getting the Orbeas…

IMO the frog 55 is a hybrid that better on tarmac than XC.

EDIT: Both children were happier when I replaced the pedals their bikes came with for cheapo plastic BMX style pedals from CRC.

The odd bit about this is the whole idea of getting married in the first place.

I’d hazard a guess that even this won’t help her sort her visa in Brexit Britian. Do you think he will have to sit their and squirm as the questions to prove it is not a marriage of convenience get asked 😀

I did something similar in a fast food resturant once. I queued up, ordered and paid. I accepted my change and then walked out without any food.

To be fair I’d had a lot on my plate that day; or not as the case was later when I realised I was still hungry.

Well since in this workplace mystical beliefs are obviously encouraged I would start slowly bringing my own weird shit it.

I’d start off small, maybe a pocket bible and emergency stake and hammer; and then slowly ramp it up to incense and throwing salt around to ward off the evil spirits that someone else seems to have attracted. A full on exorcism might be the final option…

control 51% of the ledgers and just walk off with everyone’s money?

No, assuming they could manipulate things the way they wanted you would still end up with a fork in that blockchain with 2 currencies resulting from it.

A hard fork is why I now have ~ £8.50 worth of BitCoin-Cash alongside my ~ £150 of Bitcoin. It just creates more money Yayyy 😀

Block-chain are here to stay, and my bet is they will eventually be used for loads of important things as a form of uncrackable database e.g. storing title-deeds, Bills of Laden, generic proof of ownership etc. Currency is just one usage and might not be the one that actually endures if it remains so volatile, slow to register actual transactions and continues to carry high transaction fees.

My almost 6 yo is about to move to his 8yo sisters frog 52 as well. His sister now wants something with 26″ wheels that can do wheelies 😆

Some of those are high density disks too. 1.44Mb of porn 😀

I knew a bloke who was into something crystal. He asked me to help him set something up on his PC, but then wouldn’t let me touch the keyboard because said machine was actually possessed by his dead uncle and I might upset him with my aggressive typing!

I don’t know him any more…

@fasthaggis your Venn diagram made me think of this;

Nah it’s not really relevant tbh

As we know from several STW threads. That’ll be £500 +VAT please 😀

I really must stick an ad in the classifieds with all the spare PC kit I have laying about… Sounds like you lot would have snaffled it all up 😀

The i5-4570 CPU in that ebay machine is a pretty decent – especially if you have a mobo that lets you turbo boost all the cores to 3.6GHz. It’s enough that it can keep my GTX 980Ti running full whack at 1440p. There is simply no need for the expensive i7’s or crazy over-clocks for the majority of games IMO.

I also graduated in 2000 with a 2:1 BA(Hons) History (albeit from Brunel not Oxford).

I think I will sue just because it has been very little help in my 17 year career in IT, just what were they thinking when they signed me up? And as for my lecturer encouraging me to write my disseratation on the use of atomic weapons in 1945… I think I might have PTSD from reading some of the first hand accounts. That must be worth a few more quid, right?

Now if only I could find a shady out of work lawyer to take my case…

Round trip of 280 TP and about 30k Avioses. Nice

I wish. I think it was more like 40 tier points and 2400 avios. I think the game is rigged so that some of us will never be treated as little more than peasants. I’d write to my local MP, but I expect he’d be sat next to you quaffing champagne 😆

@CFH take the hats away and the picture is about right for gate A3 at 0645 on a Monday morning 😆

Need a few Asia trips to get the gold back fast.

I think you’d need more than a few trips. My last long-haul to Seattle got me barely more tier points than a flight to Amsterdam. I ‘earned’ loads of Avios – and by loads I mean I could afford to buy a sandwhich on my next flight 😉

Isn’t that the only thing about bronze ?

Pretty much.

The only other airline I frequently fly is SAS – they still give you free coffee (although that’s meaningless to me as work will cover the cost of a coffee if I don’t want to spend Avios).

I used to use Easy Jet for some trips, but not so much recently. Paying £15 to sit at the front and get speedy boarding was worth it, and still way cheaper than BA and not much different once on board. I suppose flying form T5 is usually a much better experience than the building site that Luton was (when I last flew from there 9 months ago).

On a recent BA flight one of the crew mentioned that they are expecting less leg room on some of the newer airbuses coming in for european flights. At 6’3″ unless I am in an emergency exit seat I already struggle!

I regularly fly BA within Europe. This is a non-story, they are just formalising something that usually happens on full flights anyway – except they call you forward by row.

He reached the passport/ticket desk just ahead of me, only to be told that his Bronze card counted for approximately the square root of bugger all. I was called forward and greeted with overly theatrical schmooze while he was made to wait in shame.

He isn’t as daft as he looks, he will now be the first Bronze Card holder to board. I sometimes consider doing this 🙂 Being in Bronze is sometimes purgatory where you queue up behind the Gold & Silver Card holders only for everyone else to be called forward before you get to the desk. It was quite funny when two Bronze holders were told to go back to the Executive Club queue when they snuck into the front of the queue for everyone else.

The best thing about Bronze is that you can select your seats a week in advance. It usually means I can sit in the emergency exits and stretch out 🙂

And as for being last on board, it depends on the flight. I wouldn’t recommend it on the early morning flights (which are completely full of business travllers) unless you are checking your bags in. The overhead lockers fill up quickly.

The worst flight for me was a return from Copenhagen that was filled with American OAP’s returning from a Scandinavian cruise. It took forever to get them all aboard and for the crew to prise their various shopping bags off them to be correctly stowed. I thought the crazy old dear next to me died at least twice…

For that sort of money I’d recommend second hand/refurbished or maybe a Chromebook. Most Windows laptops at that price are of poor quality with low resolution screens etc.

My wife and daughter both have refurbished Lenovo Thinkpads, both cost less than £300 and are solid well specced machines. They are not however all that light or trendy looking.

https://www.encore-pc.co.uk/laptops/windows-laptops

Why people give this sort of shite the time of day astonishes me

@nickc

Because it’s fun to switch off critical thinking, have a pint and talk bollocks. Anyway what crawled up your nose? You’re the bloody author!

Nick Cook – The Hunt For Zero Point

😆

Find the book; The Hunt For Zero Point, there was also a documentary. Nothing about Aliens but lots about top secret projects, well worth a look if you are in to this sort of thing. Loads of dribs and drabs of evidence that the yanks replaced the SR71 with, something…

I don’t think we should be basing any aircraft on things that crash into the Earth so frequently…

Just muddy the waters by shouting about ‘personal’ data, GDPR and your right to be forgotten. It will probably take 4 years and 2 court cases to work out if it’s even relevant…

I transfer the Mrs £700 a month to cover the shopping etc. I have no idea how that breaks down but the fridge is usually full and my favorite crisps and biscuts are in the cupboard, so I don’t ask…

If musicbee doesn’t work for you fre:ac should. http://www.freac.org

remastered version of Homeworld

I just discovered this is in my Steam library. I have never installed or played it 😳 I probably picked it up for buttons during a Steam Sale.

i-War 1 & 2 are reduced on gog.com at the moment for less than £8. Great value if you can put up with the dated graphics.

If you are feeling particularly poor or only possess a dated machine there are also opensource projects around Freespace 2 and Elite – Frontier. I can’t say how good they are…

Everspace is probably the closest to thing to Freelancer at the moment – crazy fast paced dog-fights etc.

If you liked the original Descent have a look at Sublevel Zero. Another one you can play for a quick 20 minute fix before going back to whatever you should really be doing 🙂

Maybe just an attempt get his TT under the hour? I doubt I could do that ‘additives’ or not!

I quite like the ‘X Beyond the Frontier’ serie of games but rarely have the time to play. I own Elite Dangerous but have yet to try it for the same reason.

I found Everspace is simple to get to grips with and you can have a 10 minute blast and then do something else.

For a nice simple game have a look at PixelJunk shooter – great fun playing with someone else and a bit like a 1980’s 2D game.

Before you buy see what is availble on Gog.com and humble bundle, sometimes you can get a much better deal than directly from steam.

Basic formula for a whole bike is 50% of what it cost new, plus or minus 10% for condition and upgrades. I think…

Question: does “remembrance” have the same meaning now we have “professional” soldiers?

Yes, I’d argue even more so.

Professional soldiers don’t join the army expecting to be killed or wounded – they just know it’s a risk. The attitude is typically that it won’t be you, it will only happen to someone else. Many recruits are under 20 when they sign up and a large part of our army is now the Army Reserve; with all the best-will in the world they are not profesional soldiers. Even the training that many members of the armed forces do is dangerous, as are many non war-fighting deployments.

You should note that some local rememberance services also make a point to remember those that died protecting communities not as military personel but Fire-Fighters etc. e.g. https://www.ddfire.gov.uk/news/durham-remembrance-parade-2017

There are a few strands to this thread to bear in mind;

Poppies are sold by the RBL, a charity which works to help former service members and their familes. The work it does is still relevant today. Buying a poppy will help them do that.

White Poppies are sold as a symbol of peace by the PPU, to remind people that there are many more victims of war other than the military. I’m not sure what the PPU does with your money if you buy one, but it won’t help any former members of Britains Armed Forces.

Finally it’s a time of rememberence, we don’t live in a facist state, choose to remember it how you will, or not. You are free to do so; ignore anyone critical of your choice.

3 pages, an argument between 4 arm-chair lawyers and Big N Daft pays £500 + VAT.

I think we’ll be spared the crazy car-finance lady…

and a well specced Skoda Superb.

Not if it’s for your brother-in-law who happens to be a trading standards officer in Newcastle.

Fred

Triangles are not to be used on Motorways at all.

It’s covered under rule 275.

leave the vehicle by the left-hand door and ensure your passengers do the same. You MUST leave any animals in the vehicle or, in an emergency, keep them under proper control on the verge. Never attempt to place a warning triangle on a motorway

It’s all in here:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/breakdowns-and-incidents-274-to-287

Rule 277

If you cannot get your vehicle onto the hard shoulder:

1. do not attempt to place any warning device on the carriageway
2. switch on your hazard warning lights
3. leave your vehicle only when you can safely get clear of the carriageway.