Proceedings of the Castle Aching Parish Council, 1905

[Nearholmer]

2 minutes ago, Hroth said:

a posh sort of school who, in the early/mid 60s, had their own minicomputer,

 

Ours was a county council comprehensive, so hardly posh, but it was the late 60s, so maybe five years made all the difference!

[drmditch]

Re: Computing.

The first computer I had anything to do with was an English Electric KDF 9.

It took up quite a large room.

One had to feed it punched tape (or possibly cards - but perhaps the cards came later!)

 

That as in the early 1970s.

There was a time in the 1980s when I did know how computers worked.

My professional view in the 1980s and 90s was that computing and software tools should be designed to assist people, and not in any way to limit or attempt to control them.

 

Well that didn't last did it?

 

Now I spend as little time as possible dealing with computers/'phones etc.

Just, unfortunately, needing to wrestle with Windows 10. Otherwise I will have to throw away a perfectly functional tablet computer with 30gb of storage (and I used to run whole factories on 12gb), because the said W10 doesn't clear down or manage it's space properly.

 

I'm much better spending the time working with practical tools on my railway.

Perhaps it would be simpler to give in and purchase a new tablet - preferably not running W10.

 

Meanwhile, if any railway line needs inspecting soon, I am working on this,

 

 

 

It will be in post-grouping livery, but very much (1903) a pre-grouping vehicle.

 

Edited February 6, 2021 by drmditch

[Regularity]

6 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Just to be clear here, I wasn't aiming to suggest that @Regularity is a disciple of QAnon - he's evidently very far from that! It's the range of things he knows that is worrying in its scope, at least in the field of pre-grouping railways.

 

6 hours ago, Annie said:

Well no he couldn't be could he since he has an active fully functioning brain in his head.

Thanks both: I was not worried. I know pretty well how much I don’t know and the more I know, the more I realise how little I know.

 

 I have an acquisitive mind, when interested. Shoddy when not...

 

(In truth, I have ADHD, which can be fun at times, and depressing at others: literally so as I also suffer from PDD.)

Edited February 6, 2021 by Regularity

[Annie]

20 hours ago, Annie said:

The first computer I ever owned never gave me these kinds of problems.

And now I've been discovered by the secret spy network that does its level best to follow us all around on the internet so it can sell our information to companies so they can target advertising at us.  This morning I had a huge email full of bright tempting pictures telling me to download the Twit app and representing the whole thing as if it would be of great benefit to me.  I deleted it immediately, -as any sensible person would.  Plainly there are risks involved in owning what is termed by our modern society a 'smart' phone.

I do actually have a Twit account, but I never look at it.  The last time I did it seemed to be full of messages from brain dead people displaying their minimal intelligence.

 

[Caley Jim]

I take nothing to do with any form of social media (unless WhatsApp counts?) so don't have these problems!  

 

Jim

[Hroth]

7 minutes ago, Caley Jim said:

I take nothing to do with any form of social media (unless WhatsApp counts?) so don't have these problems!  

 

Jim

 

I think this counts as "social media" too... 

 

[Nearholmer]

13 hours ago, Annie said:

what is termed by our modern society a 'smart' phone.

Mine is certainly smarter than me - it’s forever tricking me into doing things I later regret, and it’s control functions were clearly designed to let it control me, rather than vice-versa.

[DonB]

The first Computer I saw in industry was in 1963 ,I think, a main-frame in the wages department occupying a room about 15 ft x 10ft . They had sacked 2 lady wage clerks and employed 2 electricians to operated and service it. Every night 2 sets of memory disks ( or memory tape reels ? or punched tape reels ?) were taken across the road for safe storage, One set to the safe in a news agent's shop, the other set to the Chemist's shop 50 yards further away. 

[figworthy]

8 hours ago, Caley Jim said:

I take nothing to do with any form of social media (unless WhatsApp counts?) so don't have these problems!  

 

Jim

 

WhatsApp is a part of the Facebook empire, and so is firmly in that mess that is antisocial media.

 

Adrian

[DonB]

On 05/02/2021 at 11:48, burgundy said:

When Castle Aching Parish Council meets on Zoom, is the discussion recorded?

 Best of the Handforth Parish Council Planning & Environment Committee Thursday 10th December 2020 - YouTube

Best wishes 

Eric

Those Suffragettes have much to answer for.

[Compound2632]

15 minutes ago, DonB said:

Those Suffragettes have much to answer for.

 

To d**n right:

 

 

Midland Railway carriages destroyed by fire at Kings Norton carriage sidings on the night of Sunday 15 March 1914, presumed Suffragette arson. This may have been the work of Lillias Tate Mitchell, organiser of the Birmingham Suffragettes at the time. Her brother, Capt. John Monfries Mitchell of the 7th Battalion, Royal Scots, died in a burning carriage at Quintishill on the Caledonian Railway just over a year later. 

 

Sorry, that took rather a grim turn. I hadn't meant it to when I started.

[Annie]

5 hours ago, DonB said:

The first Computer I saw in industry was in 1963 ,I think, a main-frame in the wages department occupying a room about 15 ft x 10ft . They had sacked 2 lady wage clerks and employed 2 electricians to operated and service it. Every night 2 sets of memory disks ( or memory tape reels ? or punched tape reels ?) were taken across the road for safe storage, One set to the safe in a news agent's shop, the other set to the Chemist's shop 50 yards further away. 

My IBM 8088 had originally belonged to the NZ Government Electricity Dept and had all kinds of CAD models on it's hard drive for transformers and other items of electrical equipment.  They had been discovered in a government store room and trucked off enmass to a computer recycler's premises that I often used to lurk about in.  At about $NZ 20.00 each they were a bargain and I forget how many I ended up with.  My children certainly had a lot of fun with them.

As for me they were my introduction to computing and I kept on with using DOS powered IBM or IBM compatible computers well into the Windows era.  It was only after I enquired after a copy of DOS 6.22 at a computer shop and was stared at in disbelief by the shop staff that it began to dawn on me that I might be not exactly following the leading edge of computing technology.

 

[monkeysarefun]

2 hours ago, Annie said:

My IBM 8088 had originally belonged to the NZ Government Electricity Dept and had all kinds of CAD models on it's hard drive for transformers and other items of electrical equipment.  They had been discovered in a government store room and trucked off enmass to a computer recycler's premises that I often used to lurk about in.  At about $NZ 20.00 each they were a bargain and I forget how many I ended up with.  My children certainly had a lot of fun with them.

As for me they were my introduction to computing and I kept on with using DOS powered IBM or IBM compatible computers well into the Windows era.  It was only after I enquired after a copy of DOS 6.22 at a computer shop and was stared at in disbelief by the shop staff that it began to dawn on me that I might be not exactly following the leading edge of computing technology.

 

 

 

I know that if we kept everything just in case "it was worth something one day" no one would have room for new stuff, but .....

 

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/Nice-Rare-Vintage-8088-IBM-PCjr-4863-Computer-Monitor-Keyboard-Mouse-AC/353065501820?hash=item523458047c:g:SzgAAOSwWoReqw3o

[Edwardian]

On 06/02/2021 at 09:57, Ian Simpson said:

I can live with the people who don't know that they don't know (after all I may be one myself). It's the people who don't care that they don't know that worry me.

 

No, it's worse than that.

 

It's the people who don't know that they don't know yet who think that they do!  

 

Add such people to social media and manipulate them by a nationalist populist and you get a nastily skewed democracy producing idiotic outcomes.

 

These are the people who say things like "I'm entitled to my point of view!", by which they mean that their ill-informed, or, sometimes downright moronic, utterances have equal weight and validity with those of someone who actually knows what they're talking about.

 

This has been the subject of academic study: The psychological phenomenon of illusory superiority was identified as a form of cognitive bias in Kruger and Dunning's 1999 study "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments"

 

In a nutshell: "If you're incompetent, you can't know you're incompetent ... The skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is", whereas people who are brighter tend to appreciate the limits of their understanding.

 

The Dunning-Kruger Effect

 

You can see from the effect curve below how those who know the least are the most confident in their opinions. QAnon is just made for such people.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Adam88]

On 08/02/2021 at 10:26, Edwardian said:

 

No, it's worse than that.

 

It's the people who don't know that they don't know yet who think that they do!  

 

Add such people to social media and manipulate them by a nationalist populist and you get a nastily skewed democracy producing idiotic outcomes.

 

These are the people who say things like "I'm entitled to my point of view!", by which they mean that their ill-informed, or, sometimes downright moronic, utterances have equal weight and validity with those of someone who actually knows what they're talking about.

 

This has been the subject of academic study: The psychological phenomenon of illusory superiority was identified as a form of cognitive bias in Kruger and Dunning's 1999 study "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments"

 

In a nutshell: "If you're incompetent, you can't know you're incompetent ... The skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is", whereas people who are brighter tend to appreciate the limits of their understanding.

 

The Dunning-Kruger Effect

 

You can see from the effect curve below how those who know the least are the most confident in their opinions. QAnon is just made for such people.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I didn't know this, when I glimpsed the graph I thought that it was going to be a picture of the Gartner Hype Curve which is very similar in form.  I've been up and down the latter on several occasions.

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle

 

 

Edited September 3, 2022 by Adam88
restore missing image

[Nearholmer]

Parallel conversation, covering the same issues, going-on in the coronavirus thread right now.

 

Edwardian makes the point so incredibly well.

[Caley Jim]

14 hours ago, figworthy said:

WhatsApp is a part of the Facebook empire, and so is firmly in that mess that is antisocial media.

I only use WhatsApp to communicate with family and friends.  By 'social media' i was meaning f***book and the twits.

 

On here is to share experiences with, support and, hopefully, encourage like minded others who, on this thread and the other two I frequent (2MM Finescale and Railways of Scotland) are civil, respectful and incredibly supportive.

 

Jim

[Regularity]

4 hours ago, Adam88 said:

 

I didn't know this, when I glimpsed the graph I though that it was going to be a picture of the Gartner Hype Curve which is very similar in form.  I've been up and down the latter on several occasions.

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle

 

 

If it’s from Gartner, it’s probably a product of inflated expectations to begin with...

[Adam88]

1 hour ago, Regularity said:

If it’s from Gartner, it’s probably a product of inflated expectations to begin with...

 

I think it's been around long enough now to have reached its own plateau.

[Compound2632]

5 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Edwardian makes the point so incredibly well.

 

One should hope so, given his training.

[Nearholmer]

I'm trained as an electrical engineer, but I still get a warm glow when someone compliments me for my ability to wire-up a three-pin plug. Positive feedback and all that ......... in the colloquial, rather than engineering sense.

[Hroth]

44 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I'm trained as an electrical engineer, but I still get a warm glow when someone compliments me for my ability to wire-up a three-pin plug. Positive feedback and all that ......... in the colloquial, rather than engineering sense.

 

It's amazing how many folk find wiring a 3-pin plug a black art. Then again , I suppose you wouldn't want them to try it for themselves in case they get  ANY sort of feedback...

[rocor]

On 08/02/2021 at 10:52, Adam88 said:

 

I didn't know this, when I glimpsed the graph I thought that it was going to be a picture of the Gartner Hype Curve which is very similar in form.  I've been up and down the latter on several occasions.

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle

 

 

 

I read this as the garter hype curve, for which the peak of inflated expectations and the trough of disillusionment really seemed  appropriate.

[Compound2632]

19 minutes ago, rocor said:

I read this as the garter hype curve, for which the peak of inflated expectations and the trough of disillusionment really seemed  appropriate.

 

... and the slope of enlightenment and plateau of productivity?

[rocor]

2 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

... and the slope of enlightenment and plateau of productivity?

Nothing like so much.