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andyjenn's comments

andyjenn | 4 years ago | on: Rugby: Head impact study shows cognitive decline after just one season

There are almost constant rule changes around the tackle laws, the breakdown and de-powering the scrum to reduce the amount of potential head trauma, but the professional era it's like an arms race. Even padding and head-gear, players seem to hit with even more force. And, like the article says, a lot of the concussions happen during the training sessions which is way more than the average amateur player would experience. It's still relatively soon to see the longer-term effects; the early batch of professionals from the mid/late 90s will soon be entering their 60s and I expect there will be more research papers..

andyjenn | 5 years ago | on: Some SQL Tricks of an Application DBA

I've not heard it before. I was an Application"s" DBA for several years, but this was specifically for Oracle's ERP suite of business applications. The role mixed straight DBA responsibilities with middleware and business administration.

andyjenn | 8 years ago | on: A personal ode to the Boeing 747

It's the 4 engines which gives airlines A380/747 fuel cost problems. Both fulfil relatively niche markets and are gradually being displaced by the more-efficient and flexible twin-engine A350/787 types. We're just starting to see the secondary market for A380s now which is a good indicator for its long term commercial viability.

andyjenn | 12 years ago | on: Starting an Airline

The US ExIm bank also provides billions in either direct loans or loan guarantees to foreign companies; this keeps the export market artificially high and effectively subsidises non-US operators and lessors too.

andyjenn | 13 years ago | on: Stephen Hawking lost $100 bet over Higgs boson discovery

Something I've wondered, presumably for several hundred years, Ptolemy's observations could be thought of as the standard model, and consistently day after day, year after year, the sun rose in the east and set in the west to 5 or 6 sigma etc.. that it could be said was proof he was correct. Ptolemy is often spoken in the pejorative, but for so long until the man from Krakow came along, how could you prove otherwise? Does this situation apply today and that a future "Copernicus" will turn the Higgs Boson on its head? Genuinely interested how a consistent set of findings which correspond to predictions, can really be said to prove a discovery?

andyjenn | 14 years ago | on: The Caging of America

"The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons." - Dostoyevsky.

andyjenn | 14 years ago | on: The Collison Brothers and Story Behind The Founding Of Stripe

"Patrick founded Auctomatic and joined Y Combinator as a Winter 2007 company. Its path would not last long. At the age of 19 and ten months after incorporating, the company was bought by Live Current Media for $5MM where Patrick became the Director of Product Engineering in 2008"

andyjenn | 14 years ago | on: Beware the Alan Turing fetish

Thanks for the notice, will watch that tonight.

Sounds like an example of mediocre journalism picking up on well worn themes: brilliant outcast genius, untimely death and potential riches lost, extrapolated and simplified.

As an aside, and I don't know if this will be covered in the programme, there was an interesting report on Radio 4 some time ago about the treatment Alan Turing went through to "cure" his homosexuality. Whilst I had previously thought this only to be barbaric acts by small minded people, the report suggested some of the medics genuinely thought that this science could actually change him and be a force for good.

Doesn't really change much, but it altered my views...slightly.

andyjenn | 14 years ago | on: What I learned on a round-the-world yacht race

I started on the training for the 2008 race, however after 2 sessions, the Global Challenge business folded due to lack of a headline sponsor (it had previously been BT).

In your training manual the first page has the perfect quote.. "There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures. "

I'm not into cheesy inspirational posters, but this is the only one on my wall.

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