IT Posts
What’s really behind the Huawei ban?
The security case against Huawei has always been weak
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Working from home: a living hell
A post-Covid ‘WFH’ regime will allow bosses to snoop as never before and isolate workers from each other
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Tailoring IT to the needs of customers
Few IT-based products and services are really a byword for intelligibility, let alone unalloyed customer satisfaction
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The Huawei dilemma
Should Britain do a deal with the Chinese company? It’s complicated
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Honours list data breach
Sky News discussion on the data breach of 1100 addresses of people on the New Year’s honours list
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Contact Centres 2030: The Shape of Automation to Come
Artificial Intelligence is spreading – above all, to help staff deal with customers better
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No, we are not addicted to smartphones
The idea that we’re at the mercy of Silicon Valley is an elitist myth
The Fake Phenomenon
“Sincerity – if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” US comedian George Burns
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IT illusions: the case of transport
The future of the car is Mobility as a Service (MaaS)? That’s a chimera
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Customer service: toward a new, very different agenda
Customer loyalty? The whole idea is past its sell-by date
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What CIOs need to know about workplace biometrics
Biometrics, in which IT captures and checks a person’s unique biological and behavioral characteristics, is spreading through the world’s workplaces. It’s time to understand where the technology is headed
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Where SMEs should start in automating IT
Why the uptake of automation has been slow so far, and where to start now.
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What AI and Machine Learning mean for business
First things first. There’s no such thing as genuine Artificial Intelligence.
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Why we shouldn’t weep over WannaCry
The hacking of the NHS was bad, but not that bad
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The psychobabble behind the ‘AI is racist’ claim
Astonishing news is in. Apparently, artificial intelligence can be bigoted, too.
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Let’s get real about Augmented and Virtual Reality
In the medium term the real deal looks like being AR, more than VR
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No, your home won’t be hacked
The panic about every household gadget being hit by computer hackers is overdone
On Friday 21 October an unprecedented cyber-attack hit many important websites, including Twitter, eBay and the New York Times.
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Samsung’s critics: recalling the future
Three dozen melted-down batteries among 2.5m new mobile phones is no reason to slow down innovation
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Financial services: is a robot stealing your job?
This keynote speech, delivered for the financial IT platform Intelliflo, looked at technology advances from both a consumer and business point of view
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Automation anxiety and the future of IT
Every new day finds a fresh, still more breathless report about how robots, Artificial Intelligence and IT generally are poised to take up to half of all jobs in the West.
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No, Facebook isn’t the British Raj
The row about India’s access to the internet is a storm in a chai cup.
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Navigating the new landscape in cybersecurity
Martin Sorrell, CEO of the giant marketing services firm WPP, usually has a handle on the global zeitgeist in business – as an advertising man, it’s his job.
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Invasion of the sexbots? Get a grip
In 1988, before the internet arrived in anybody’s house, I helped lead Britain’s first study of e-commerce – what was then known as ‘teleshopping’.
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What agility means for small business
With the new digital tools that are now available, organisations of every size can trade ideas and collaborate more easily than ever before.
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Mobility trends and the professional use of IT in European aviation, 2015-2025
In 2012, the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development said that air passenger traffic could double in 15 years; airfreight could treble in 20 years.(1)
Read the full article...The future of media and the relevance of Content
James Woudhuysen opened the Content, Customers & Communities in the Media Landscape conference, held at London’s Digital Catapult Centre, Dec 2014.
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Digital native? There’s no such thing
It’s a myth that children are better at IT than adults
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IT’s not the future
The Second Machine Age sacrifices sense at the altar of technology
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When telcos are terrible at communication
It’s time mobile operators fixed their networks – and their prose.
Read the full article...Chinese supercomputers
If only briefly, China’s Milky Way 2 has taken the lead in the kind of machine that will be a vital to tomorrow’s heavy lifting in security, science and manufacturing
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A Seminal Panic about Defence IT: The Marconi Scam, 1913
100 years on, corruption at a UK telco contains lessons on Snowden, Huawei and globalisation.
Read the full article...What London needs in terms of IT
Just three minutes on how the UK capital should apply IT for everyone’s benefit.
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Next killer app for smartphone: personalised healthcare
Will our smartphones one day tell us if a heart attack is on its way, and nanosensors in our bodies dispense the medicine to deal with it? Eric Topol thinks so.
Read the full article...Now is not the time to lose faith in R&D
Just a few years ago, Sun Microsystems sold a gadget that would make your business compliant with the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act of 2002.
Read the full article...New dawn rising for Eastern IT
The financial crisis in the West will strengthen the position of IT firms in the East.
Read the full article...Is man’s best friend a robot’s worst enemy?
Last month, Gartner vice president Jackie Fenn suggested that mobile robots are among the technologies that have “begun to be interesting to business”. So what’s happening in mobile and general robotics?
Read the full article...Will insight lose out to inanity on the mobile web?
On the bus above my head, the new Vodafone ads tease me about Facebook on the move. I fight back despair and disapproval, and, instead, go on to learn more from conferences on mobile phones and new kinds of broadcasting.
Read the full article...Experience trumps youthful exuberance
Back in October 2001, the American educationalist Marc Prensky suggested that there was a fundamental difference between people who had been born with IT and those who had not.
Read the full article...Whatever happened to self-reliance?
Invited to present some ideas to a very familiar UK service provider last week, I found few besuited representatives of the client at its head office.
Read the full article...Lara Croft gets down to business
It had to happen. IBM, still a venerable name in the computer industry, has taken yet another step to get down there with the kids.
Read the full article...Compulsive computer use
Can’t kick the IT habit? It’s time to stop worrying and state the case for free will.
Read the full article...Innovation is more than combination
New technological breakthroughs are often a clever mix of old ones. But they also mark a leap named Progress.
Read the full article...HDTV shows the way for online comms
Directed at entertainment, high-definition TV could also prove the turning point for video conferencing.
Read the full article...Youth worship will put economy on its knees
The reasons given for venerating ‘tech-savvy’ Generation Y are not new and yet again fail to convince.
Read the full article...B2B e-merchants must raise their game
In the literature of innovation, 3M’s Post-it notes are regularly cited as an example of a great company making the most of a serendipitous innovation.
Read the full article...Green issues need blue-skies thinking
Recently I was at a conference on the state of London. Mayor Ken Livingstone made the opening address. One of his chief slogans concerned human waste: “If it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down”.
Read the full article...Don’t let the e-waste tail wag the innovation dog
Killer applications, not regulatory labyrinths about waste, are the way forward in IT
Read the full article...E-science creates another dimension
Remote teamworking is set to have a growing role in scientific research and experimentation.
Read the full article...Broadband goes with the flow
Enthusiasm for broadband appears particularly strong in wealthy countries with a rich maritime heritage.
Read the full article...Happy birthday, Apple II
Thirty years ago, product design and graphics helped the Apple II outsell Commodore’s PET, and paved the way for today’s obsession with computer games.
Read the full article...Call centres should move with the times
Poor service from providers makes getting basic IT services into a new home the bane of modern life.
Read the full article...Is transport IT on the right road?
The focus of transport technology policy should be on improving efficiency, not monitoring journeys.
Read the full article...IT is our best bet for urban renewal
New Labour’s enthusiasm for supercasinos betrays a lack of faith in the transformative power of IT.
Read the full article...Wave goodbye to gesture-free PCs
In 2017, when you spot members of staff gesticulating at their PCs, it will be more likely that they are hard at work than losing at poker.
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Farewell to ‘seamless’: how CIOs can make enterprises agile
Special to Siemens Enterprise Communications
Read the full article...Making a tidy sum from all fears
Environmental concerns and contamination fears are likely to generate big business for technology firms.
Read the full article...How to tackle blogger critics
Companies are being advised to use in-house bloggers to appease their online detractors.
Read the full article...Will eco-fear stifle innovation?
Knee-jerk IT choices made in the face of imaginary meltdowns could stymie technological innovation.
Read the full article...How IT will cook up a feast for the eyes
Trends in computing mean developers will soon have to add visual literacy to their skills.
Read the full article...The fear behind the IT disasters
Anxiety over risk is prompting government to outsource more than just contracts, but the policy process itself
Read the full article...NHS puts IT in the casualty ward
The broad goals of the NHS Connecting for Health programme are laudable, so what is going wrong?
Read the full article...Smarty-pants ideas to make work better
Wearable IT is starting to have an impact in sport and may soon make a significant improvement to the lives of thousands of workers.
Read the full article...Dress smarter for a better life
Fashionistas and technologists are starting to develop off-the-peg solutions to everyday problems.
Read the full article...Why people feel aggrieved about public Wifi
More urban WiFi hotspots are not a human right – but they would aid mobility
Read the full article...Unhappy? Don’t blame IT gadgets
If you’re feeling sad and lonely, cutting back on IT gadgets won’t help
Read the full article...RFID wireless tags face hurdles
Privacy concerns and high costs may delay the widespread adoption of RFID technology
Read the full article...Hardware design isn’t old hat
Engineering should come before the user’s experience of IT
Read the full article...Chasing the green pound
Will plans for eco-friendly homes fitted with high-tech energy meters be a money-spinner for IT firms?
Read the full article...Thames Gateway: when IT really matters
If the communications of the government are to be believed, a large-scale residential community such as Thames Gateway can be sustainable, yet devoid of IT
Read the full article...Is being green a turn-off?
Teleworkers who neglect to switch off their kit may not be the eco-vandals some would have us believe.
Read the full article...IT holds key to East London regeneration
Everywhere you go in an office, regulators want to control your life.
Read the full article...IT makes staff struggle in isolation
Staff development suffers in offices where technology takes precedence over human interaction
Read the full article...Voice-operated: a word-of-mouth success
Speech-to-text tools are improving and can be a real boon for people who find typing difficult
Read the full article...ID cards yes, mobile government no
The government’s enthusiasm for ID cards is in stark contrast to its lukewarm attitude to mobile IT
Read the full article...Big-headed ideas for mobile systems
It is time to think large and ambitious, not small and niche, for mobile enterprise applications.
Read the full article...Cool heads needed for RFID debate
Trade unions, lawyers and privacy campaigners worried about “Big Brother spychips” should not be allowed to dictate the RFID agenda.
Read the full article...Power and responsibility go together
You’ve heard about business continuity. In 2006, you’ll be hearing about energy continuity.
Read the full article...IT hosts help airlines to soar again
Disputes between Boeing and Airbus spiral. In the US, Delta and Northwest are in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
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Airlines: It makes sense to share
A breakthrough new approach to outsourcing is now available to the airline industry which has the potential to transform performance in this sector, and also act as a leading example to other industries.
Read the full article...Time to switch on to mobile television
Media scares about mobile TV’s potential to corrupt kids obscure the technology’s many advantages for business
Read the full article...IT must address grey matters
Technology must be harnessed to ensure businesses get the best out of the UK’s ageing workforce
Read the full article...The new service design
The design critic John Thackara’s new book highlights much of the coming agenda for IT in services.
Read the full article...The government IT club wants you
Government IT may be changing but it still encroaches where it is not needed
Read the full article...Tying WiFi down
Wireless broadband is the latest casualty of burgeoning regulation in the workplace.
Read the full article...Staff may be happier at home
Once, only BT really tried to turn telework to its advantage. Now Sun and Brother have adopted similar tactics.
Read the full article...Building on the desktop
In the august British Library, you can turn the pages of a digital version of the Leonardo Notebook by hand.
Read the full article...IT gets behind the wheel of a car
IT in cars may not create mobile offices, but there will be productivity benefits
Read the full article...Time to put the C into ICT
The illustrious Royal Society of Arts recently held a European Technology Forum on leadership in telecoms.
Read the full article...Distant dangers for staff
I was at the Henley Management College recently for a seminar on Managing Tomorrow’s Worker.
Read the full article...Give them good reason to comply
To see what the world of IT security has come to, let’s consider the University of California’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
Read the full article...IT suffers brand identity crisis
As long as the brand is king, no high-profile firm can afford to be truly adventurous
Read the full article...Housing crisis will hit IT
Last week the Institution of Electrical Engineers hosted a Guardian conference titled Key worker housing: building on foundations to crack the crisis.
Read the full article...Broadband brings broad benefits
The best thing about broadband is that it looks set to become part of the furniture.
Read the full article...Will the world find salvation or apocalypse in IT?
Why do pundits so often ignore the possibility that IT might improve life?
Read the full article...In praise of strong leadership
Bill Gates and Sun’s Scott McNealy have kissed and made up. Intel’s Craig Barrett has defied the company’s critics. And at Apple, Steve Jobs is riding high on the success of the iPod.
Read the full article...How IT can make city life better
If councils want to use the web to assist urban revival, they should spend less time on waffle and more on building useful services.
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Wireless is nothing without The Face
Do a Google search for ‘Productivity benefits of videoconferencing’, and you’ll find precisely three entries. So if the Voice over IP community has been slow to explain the productivity benefits of VoIP, it has been slower still to foresee the coming revolution in PC-based videoconferencing.
Read the full article...New players on the IT stage
Recent moves by a Chinese PC maker and an Indian teleco highlight the global forces reshaping IT
Read the full article...Beware smotherers of invention
Few newspapers covered Lord Sainsbury’s December report for the Department of Trade and Industry, Competing in the Global Economy: the Innovation Challenge.
Read the full article...Brussels outlaws skipping
By 13 August 2005, under the EU Directive 2002/96/EC on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), manufacturers and importers of IT hardware must arrange and fund the recovery, reuse and recycling of discarded kit.
Read the full article...Developing IT
For all the concern about the ‘digital divide’, there is little sense of the real difference IT could make to the developing world.
Read the full article...Let IT be a force for good
On 10 December, the UN’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU) opens its World Summit on the Information Society, in Geneva.
Read the full article...Is military IT power waning?
Military IT was once a seedbed for innovation, but today it appears business IT is calling the shots
Read the full article...When offices go PC
As offices have got more complex, salaried posts in facilities management (FM) have multiplied. Yet many firms have also been persuaded that their own staff are not the best people to handle tasks as varied as leaky plumbing and the provision of furniture.
Read the full article...Is it RIP for R&D?
Henry Chesbrough’s Open innovation suggests that most firms should leave R&D to the specialists.
Read the full article...The future in 3G
Third-generation mobiles could boost production as well as consumption – if only network developers would develop them.
Read the full article...Putting the IT into politics
A little more conviction and a little less ‘compulsion’ might get people interested in e-government.
Read the full article...Dangers of information abuse
So now we know. In the fog of Gulf War 2, terabytes of data about Iraq were sent back from GPS satellites and robot spyplanes and displayed on perhaps 100,000 giant flat screens and laptops.
Read the full article...Review of ‘Calculated Risks’: Thomas Watson Sr and the Making of IBM
Kevin Maney’s biography of IBM founder Thomas Watson does justice to his daring personality.
Read the full article...Things to come … Big Brother for bugs
Creepy-crawlies account for more than half the known species on the planet.
Read the full article...IT must keep its head in a crisis
The scale and ease of transmission of Sars have been exaggerated by the media, with the result that stock market analysts have marked down growth prospects for tourism, airlines, Thailand and even Japan.
Read the full article...Lack of IT cements housing crisis
In his Budget speech, Gordon Brown blamed the housing market for most of the past 50 years of “stop-go” problems in the British economy.
Read the full article...IT blurs business and pleasure
It is not desktop applications that will drive mobile ones, I believe, but rather the reverse. So what will those mobile apps be?
Read the full article...Does democracy need an ‘e’?
Next month’s local government elections promise to be the usual snooze.
Read the full article...Things to come … Self-healing PCBs
A dead PC is as often caused by a cracked printed circuit board – but not for much longer, if Fred Wudl has his way.
Read the full article...Will work-life balance upset IT?
IT managers might feel little connection with the human resources issues that preoccupy so many business leaders, but it would pay to pay attention
Read the full article...Keep an eye on democracy
The recent raids on Pete Townshend and others for using their credit cards to view child pornography on the Internet have heightened public interest in surveillance.
Read the full article...Will three-card trick fool public?
As a professor, passing through the post-modern groves of academe, I often run into obscure discussions concerning personal identity.
Read the full article...My recipe for kitchen IT
I’ve just had a new kitchen installed. In the process I learnt that Britain’s best-known kitchen supplier is really a financial services company with a sideline in the joinery business.
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Management speak in IT
The contribution of IT to management speak does not just consist of technical jargon. That has its place. The contribution explored here is different: IT-speak.
Read the full article...Think-tanks turn their sights on IT
I’m at the Beyond the Backlash conference for young, influential Blairite policy wonks, listening to IT experts and representatives of the establishment all sharing their views on the future of technology.
Read the full article...Beware the bean counters
If it gets measured, it gets managed is one of the enduring myths of our time.
Read the full article...The guff of greatness
In the management of IT, is leadership all about charisma? Bill Gates might, perhaps, suggest not.
Read the full article...Hooray for Hutchison’s 3G plan
Everywhere you turn, people attack 3G. Nicholas Negroponte, director of the Media Lab at MIT, dismisses it as a “top-down” affair compared with the bottom-up prospect of 802.11b wireless LANs.
Read the full article...Brave new world of work
Richard Donkin’s Blood, sweat and tears: the evolution of work is an excellent history.
Read the full article...Converging on risk aversion
It’s short-termism in the IT world that means mergers are thought to be Bad News.
Read the full article...Mergers are a force for good
Some months back, when the Hewlett-Packard deal with Compaq first ran into flak, I defended it.
Read the full article...The real con in WorldCon
WorldCom replaced engineering with financial engineering, and paid the price.
Read the full article...Space men invade UK offices
To a Work Foundation conference to consider how office environments affect the efficiency and effectiveness of computer users.
Read the full article...Design of the times
About 80 of the US’s top Web designers who specialise in what they call “experience design” will gather shortly in Las Vegas.
Read the full article...Why is government IT jinxed?
The suspension of the Inland Revenue’s flagship Internet self-assessment service, for security reasons, is only the latest piece of bad news about government IT projects.
Read the full article...Usability cult sacrifices innovation
Last week I visited the Usability Professionals Association, to hear a youthful but stern Web designer named Martyn Perks mount a refreshing attack on user-centred Web design.
Read the full article...Don’t let them grind you down
Company boards say that they want IT directors to be more skilful with their strategies. Sounds good, doesn’t it? But there’s a problem.
Read the full article...Don’t believe e-procurement hype
What much of the public understands by procurement seems to surround BBC chairman Gavyn Davies.
Read the full article...E-learning joins the class struggle
To a conference on e-learning organised by VNU, publisher of IT Week, I go as a natural sympathiser; but I know that many educationists are not sympathetic at all.
Read the full article...Corrosive clairvoyants hinder progress
For Morgan Stanley, the market for global business-to-business ecommerce in 2000 was $200bn. For Forrester Research it was $600bn.
Read the full article...Rebranding America
Outside the land of the free, America’s IT suppliers are admired more than America’s political values. So why doesn’t the American establishment promote American IT more?
Read the full article...Let happiness prevail
In the second month after 11 September, stocks of network monitoring firms, face-recognition specialists and iris-matching suppliers have enjoyed a boom.
Read the full article...The magic of mobile
It is not wireless gizmos that make us stupid at work, but the kind of Hey Presto management thinking that prefers rabbits out of hats to real insights.
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Tidings of Joy (NOT)
Today’s excellent Netflix drama series Manhunt: Unabomber highlights the issues in this article from 2000.
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Five years before Facebook
Nearly 20 years ago, both the trend toward membership communities that Zuckerberg exploited and the trend to play around with IT at work were already very evident
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When we fear IT, we say something about each other
Is it really IT that drives Americans berserk with violence?
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Let’s hear it for voice-operated IT (1999)
Even though Toyota will this year add Amazon’s Alexa to its cars, it’s worth recalling how long it has taken us to reach that
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The great white e-bird has landed
This op-ed for The Times, written under New Labour at the turn of the century, satirises its infatuation with IT. That was then…
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Y2K; or, Remembering one of the Great IT Panics
Worried about IT’s apparent threat to democracy? Once upon a time, IT was feared as a trigger to a nuclear conflagration
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The Battle for the Living Room
Where many see excitement and promise, the reality of consumer electronics is confusion and a focus on digital minutiae
Read the full article...Making IT work for London
London’s cultural trade alone cannot restore its self-respect. What the capital needs is to exploit the wider “culture” of IT.
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I wouldn’t bank on IT
Review of Shoshana Zuboff, In the age of the smart machine: the future of work and power, Heinemann, 1988
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KOWTOWING TO BEIJING DEPT: Whaddya know? Keir Starmer finally discovers his ‘growth agenda’! As my piece also suggests, the portents don't look good for Labour to protect the UK from CCP operations https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/britain-pares-back-secretive-china-strategy-review-seeking-closer-ties-2024-12-16/
"By all means, keep up the salty, anti-Starmer tweets, Elon. But kindly keep your mega-bucks to yourself."
At the #ECB, convicted lawyer #ChristineLagarde has just beaten inflation, oh yes. But #AndrewBailey's many forecasts of lower interest rates have excelled again, with UK inflation now at 2.6 per cent
Painting: Thomas Couture, A SLEEPING JUDGE, 1859
Innovators I like
Robert Furchgott – discovered that nitric oxide transmits signals within the human body
Barry Marshall – showed that the bacterium Helicobacter pylori is the cause of most peptic ulcers, reversing decades of medical doctrine holding that ulcers were caused by stress, spicy foods, and too much acid
N Joseph Woodland – co-inventor of the barcode
Jocelyn Bell Burnell – she discovered the first radio pulsars
John Tyndall – the man who worked out why the sky was blue
Rosalind Franklin co-discovered the structure of DNA, with Crick and Watson
Rosalyn Sussman Yallow – development of radioimmunoassay (RIA), a method of quantifying minute amounts of biological substances in the body
Jonas Salk – discovery and development of the first successful polio vaccine
John Waterlow – discovered that lack of body potassium causes altitude sickness. First experiment: on himself
Werner Forssmann – the first man to insert a catheter into a human heart: his own
Bruce Bayer – scientist with Kodak whose invention of a colour filter array enabled digital imaging sensors to capture colour
Yuri Gagarin – first man in space. My piece of fandom: http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/10421
Sir Godfrey Hounsfield – inventor, with Robert Ledley, of the CAT scanner
Martin Cooper – inventor of the mobile phone
George Devol – 'father of robotics’ who helped to revolutionise carmaking
Thomas Tuohy – Windscale manager who doused the flames of the 1957 fire
Eugene Polley – TV remote controls