Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Neil Ferguson's Imperial model could be the most devastating software mistake of all time
The Telegraph ^ | 5/16/2020 | DAVID RICHARDS AND KONSTANTIN BOUDNIK

Posted on 05/19/2020 8:42:42 AM PDT by Beave Meister

In the history of expensive software mistakes, Mariner 1 was probably the most notorious. The unmanned spacecraft was destroyed seconds after launch from Cape Canaveral in 1962 when it veered dangerously off-course due to a line of dodgy code.

But nobody died and the only hits were to Nasa’s budget and pride. Imperial College’s modelling of non-pharmaceutical interventions for Covid-19 which helped persuade the UK and other countries to bring in draconian lockdowns will supersede the failed Venus space probe and could go down in history as the most devastating software mistake of all time, in terms of economic costs and lives lost.

Since publication of Imperial’s microsimulation model, those of us with a professional and personal interest in software development have studied the code on which policymakers based their fateful decision to mothball our multi-trillion pound economy and plunge millions of people into poverty and hardship. And we were profoundly disturbed at what we discovered. The model appears to be totally unreliable and you...

(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Chit/Chat; Computers/Internet; Health/Medicine; Local News
KEYWORDS: britain; classactionfodder; coronavirus; covid; covid19; evil; fakemodels; falsepremises; ferguson; followthemoney; hcqludditeholocaust; imperialcollege; kungflu; liberals; lockdown; moogoogaipandemic; neilferguson; plandemic; softwaremistakenot; stayathome; uk; unitedkingdom; usefulidiot; wuhanvirus
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-22 next last
Someone needs to pay for this in flesh...
1 posted on 05/19/2020 8:42:42 AM PDT by Beave Meister
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Beave Meister

Poverty and hardship is all part of the plan. That is the desired outcome.


2 posted on 05/19/2020 8:49:52 AM PDT by subterfuge (RIP T.P.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Beave Meister

“Houston, we have a problem...”


3 posted on 05/19/2020 8:51:39 AM PDT by Dogbert41 (Jerusalem is the city of the Great King!!!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Beave Meister

Jack Ruby the fink, once he is out of England.


4 posted on 05/19/2020 8:53:02 AM PDT by Terry L Smith
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Beave Meister

No paywall version, similar content:

https://the-latest.news/neil-fergusons-imperial-version-could-be-the-most-devastating-applications-mistake-of-all-time/


5 posted on 05/19/2020 8:58:26 AM PDT by Dr. Sivana (There is no salvation in politics)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Beave Meister

And I thought it was going to be the Year 2000 rollover.

Records are made to be broken.


6 posted on 05/19/2020 9:01:44 AM PDT by Pearls Before Swine
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Beave Meister

My main issue with the author’s objections to the code is that he maintains FORTRAN is “obsolete”. In many ways, those older languages are less prone to bugs in the hands of a skilled programmer than some of the newer ones, as less is happening behind the curtain.

FORTRAN is not a dominant language anymore, and neither is COBOL, and neither are obsolete, performing the same functions as before.

The language isn’t the issue. If there are errors, there are errors. If the program is poorly written, and unstructured, and therefore cannot be properly maintained, that is also another issue, but has nothing to do with the programming language, but the programmer.


7 posted on 05/19/2020 9:04:26 AM PDT by Dr. Sivana (There is no salvation in politics)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Beave Meister
Oh, I just remembered Neil Ferguson had to resign as well because he broke lockdown to meet with a married woman 🤣
8 posted on 05/19/2020 9:05:39 AM PDT by Beave Meister (Leave the gun. Take the cannoli....)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Beave Meister
The model was not a mistake but intentional and this "news" story is an attempt to cover that up.

This is a story of agenda-ists who used the work of snake oil salesman (and there are a lot in the computer modeling world) to push a worldwide economic shutdown to protect their global power.

This fake news does leave one opening though: if enough citizens demand that public policy can cite NO model that doesn't disclose all the raw data, cannot be replicated, and is not confirmed by an entity under the jurisdiction of the public policy owners.

9 posted on 05/19/2020 9:07:36 AM PDT by T.B. Yoits (The Flugaloo has begun.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Beave Meister
Neil Ferguson:

* Snuck out of lockdown to have an ongoing sexual affair with a married woman;

* Infected that woman with the China Virus and did not tell her;

* That woman then unknowingly infected her husband and children

Neil Ferguson is a fake, a fraud, an adulterer and a spreader of a deadly disease and didn't even bother to tell the married woman he was having an affair with that he himself was infected.

Why in the world should ANYONE believe a thing this guy says or produces?

10 posted on 05/19/2020 9:08:40 AM PDT by usconservative (When The Ballot Box No Longer Counts, The Ammunition Box Does. (What's In Your Ammo Box?))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Dogbert41
NAZI

NASA


11 posted on 05/19/2020 9:12:15 AM PDT by jerod (Nazi's were essentially Socialist in Hugo Boss uniforms... Get over it!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Beave Meister

Niel Ferguson actually has a HISTORY of sky high death estimates.

His projections led to millions of British livestock killed due to hoof and mouth disease projections. And it turned out inspectors were spreading it through unsterilized shoes.

He predicted up to fifty thousand dead from mad cow disease.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/jan/09/research.highereducation

He predicted up to 200 million dead from bird flu. Note that’s worse than the Wuhan virus and they still didn’t lock everything down.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/sep/30/birdflu.jamessturcke

That makes the hyperbolic Wuhan virus death projections his FOURTH wild projection .... used to determine policy


12 posted on 05/19/2020 9:14:37 AM PDT by tbw2
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Beave Meister

This presupposes the draconian prescriptions were a mistake and not advocacy. With the absence of proof of error, I lean toward advocacy.


13 posted on 05/19/2020 9:18:36 AM PDT by Sgt_Schultze (When your business model depends on slave labor, you're always going to need more slaves)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Beave Meister

The greatest software mistake was a file called God that took up the whole computer and then the whole universe.


14 posted on 05/19/2020 9:23:27 AM PDT by BEJ
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Dr. Sivana

Imperial’s model appears to be based on a programming language named Fortran, that was old information 20 years ago and, guess what, was that the code used for Mariner 1. This obsolete language includes issues that are inherent it illuminates values, which may give way to \numerous design defects and inaccuracies that are numerical. One file alone in the Imperial model contained 15,000 lines of code.

This is insane. Fortran was obsolete in the 1980’s never mind the 21st Century. And a 15,000 line (!!!) module just screams bug-ridden spaghetti code. Where in the hell did this Ferguson dig up a code monstrosity like this and decide it was ok to run?


15 posted on 05/19/2020 9:36:52 AM PDT by Flick Lives (The real virus is the MSM)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: Flick Lives

Neil Ferguson’s Imperial model could be the most devastating software mistake of all time

I seriously question the word MISTAKE. I don’t think it was.


16 posted on 05/19/2020 9:54:09 AM PDT by JayAr36 (Do you want to be a subject or a citizen.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

To: JayAr36

Neil Ferguson’s Imperial model could be the most devastating software mistake of all time

I seriously question the word MISTAKE. I don’t think it was.

I think you’re right. This was deliberate. No one in their right mind would take an abortion like a 15,000 line fortran program and run it then panic the world over the garbage output produced by this “model”. Where the hell was the peer review of the data? Who wrote this model in the first place? When else has this model been used?


17 posted on 05/19/2020 9:59:10 AM PDT by Flick Lives (The real virus is the MSM)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies]

To: AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; Arthur Wildfire! March; Berosus; Bockscar; cardinal4; ColdOne; ...
In the history of expensive software mistakes, Mariner 1 was probably the most notorious.
Limey a-holes.

18 posted on 05/19/2020 10:02:16 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Flick Lives

The word “obsolete” is NOT the same as the word “old”. Neither a 1970s TI calculator nor a slide rule is obsolete.


19 posted on 05/19/2020 10:11:44 AM PDT by Dr. Sivana (There is no salvation in politics)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

To: Sgt_Schultze

Sgt_Schultze wrote: “This presupposes the draconian prescriptions were a mistake and not advocacy. With the absence of proof of error, I lean toward advocacy.”

Hanlon’s razor is an aphorism “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”.


20 posted on 05/19/2020 10:16:08 AM PDT by DugwayDuke ("A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-22 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson