'The troll stats saddened me as a human, but didn't surprise me as a boffin'

This week, we saved the internet, screwed up our smart TVs and made absolutely no money from our YouTube accounts. In the process, we uttered some memorable lines. By far, the big story of the week was the FCC's net neutrality decision. In opting to invoke Title II, the commission will force telcos to treat all internet …

[Electron Shepherd]

there are two things Salesforce chief Marc Benioff does extremely well: run his company, and troll rival tycoon Larry Ellison

This is the company that's losing more than $1M every working day? You must have a different definition of "run a company well" from me...

[Sandtitz]

See icon -->

"Yes. Mostly because nobody uses Microsoft's browser any more."

I certainly don't use IE and most of El Reg hacks and audience probably don't either but its 2nd place behind Chrome doesn't look threatened at all as Firefox usage is slipping.

[Bleu]

I used to have an old dictionary

Concise Oxford, from about 1950.

The only definition for computor was a human working on algorithms or log tables.

There was no entry for computer.

From her own words, this auntie seems to have been doing something rather different, i.e. programming, not working as a human computor.

So a Reg writer once again needs to exert a little thought before posting the article.

I would be interested to know the language, probably a pre-77 version of Fortran.

[Mephistro]

Re: I used to have an old dictionary

"I would be interested to know the language, probably a pre-77 version of Fortran."

Ermm... no.

From the article:"Oh we didn’t have any programming languages. They weren’t very common back then.”

[Bleu]

Re: I used to have an old dictionary

It is not in the article here, it it is in the article at the link.

I have now read it, OK, direct ML, have done it on micros myself.

My error was in assuming it was in the early 1960s, not the 1950s.

I have also programmed a 1960s generation IBM machine on punched cards, much later than that time.

My central point remains valid, the auntie was not a human computor, but a programmer, in ML, and using a code book.

The former and latter are two different things.

[Mephistro]

Re: I used to have an old dictionary

When I was sixteen I had the opportunity to 'play' with one of these ancient punchcard things that a family friend had in an old storehouse. Didn't enjoy it much, as by that time I was addicted to programmable calculators, whose use was far more enjoyable than that of the old IBM beast. :-)

To the point: I totally agree with your central point. It's the exact same thing I thought while reading the article.

[Mephistro]

Re: I used to have an old dictionary

"Concise Oxford, from about 1950. ..."

My Merriam-Webster 11th edition says that the word "computer" originated in 1646 and it doesn't list the word "computor", so one of these two publications seems to be wrong.

[gotes]

Computor/computer

British English vs. US English

[JamesTQuirk]

Yes, well wait to see if "net neutrality" applies outside USA, or if foreign "users" can suffer from "'pay to use"

Sandtitz

Chrome is a rehash of Chromium on Linux, So no chrome, a cheap copy is not required, IE died a long time ago here, but firefox/thunderbird is still my favourite combo ....

Mephistro

Maybe it was about old punch cards, you have to punch code into paper to run programme ( I have the IBM Manuals for most Punch Card Units here), and old "control panels" where a little bunch of holes that you moved wire links from 1 hole to another, with multiple wires, setting machine up for different tasks, so maybe that's the coding they are talking about ..

[veti]

I don't see how the FCC can police what happens outside the USA. Foreign ISPs are governed by foreign laws, it's up to our governments what our ISPs can do to us.

More or less, anyway. Although we can cite the FCC as an example worth following on this subject - but honestly, I'm not sure that's a road we should be too eager to go down...

[JamesTQuirk]

veti

All true, except I think, these Law's are only about "Domestic" users, if a user is "Non-Domestic" they "may" find a surcharge, it's not a unheard of practice, & I am not saying it is currently happening, but it is possible ...

[earl grey]

control panels with wires

Yes, those were used on the interpreters and collator units. Unisys had similar panels on their 1004 and 1005 units.