Month: November 2012
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Amazon announce data warehouse back end solution
Today Amazon announced Redshift a data warehouse service based on PostgreSQL: Amazon Redshift Amazon Redshift is a fast and powerful, fully managed, petabyte-scale data warehouse service in the cloud. Redshift offers you fast query performance when analyzing virtually any size data set using the same SQL-based tools and business intelligence applications you use today. With…
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How to sail faster than the wind
The BBC has a great video of the Sailrocket’s world record beating run where it went over 50 knots. Interestingly the wind was only 27 knots, so how was it done? The physicist in me was intrigued. First, let us do a thought experiment. The boat is in a vacuum on a frictionless surface. Although…
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Trafford Housing Trust wriggle out of Facebook compensation
There are big injustices and little injustices. This one may seem little but it is worthy of publication because sunlight is the best disinfectant. Trafford Housing Trust wrongly demonted a man for expressing his private views privately on Facebook. The accessible Register article is here and it contains a link to the damning court judgement.…
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Social justice is leaving a tip
One of the joys of the web is that one does not have to rely on the media to digest documents for you. The quality of most government sponsored reports and enquiries is exceptionally high and one can read them online. One such is the “Final report of the commission on living standards“. The summary…
Dr James Bayley 