* Posts by phil harris

9 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Dec 2007

Microsoft hits the gas in drive to recruit autistic techies

phil harris

Well this is something that Honeywell will never do - they mindlessly pursue the goal of forcing one size/type of everything to fit all circumstances. As someone with some autistic tendencies (like a lot of engineers) I have a lot of trouble fitting into their very square holes.

Whatever anyone posting thinks, this publicity is really good.

Microsoft teases IE10 for Win7 with Blocker Toolkit

phil harris
Boffin

So the IE10 'Pre-Release' for Win7 passed you guys by then ?

I and many others have been running it for a while.

Cant say I'm impressed however, and would rather go back to ie9, but the uninstall instructions don't work...

Interestingly, I looked at the version box just now, and I might have been silently upgraded !

Slideshow: A History of Intel x86 in 20 CPUs

phil harris
Happy

mcs80 !

Sod all you sad hobbyists ;) The biggest influence in my opinion was the development kits that allowed small industrial companies to experiment with micros without breaking the bank.

The mcs80 was what my boss dropped on my lap while I was doing an onc course in 1976.

That kind of jump-start really makes a difference to being able to design kit with new tech. (It still does.)

Pause while s.o.g. goes misty eyed about numeric keypads and 7-segment displays.

How one bad algorithm cost traders $440m

phil harris

Ha Ha Ha !

Traders getting shafted by software :)

I think it was a deliberate bug put in by a developer who's money is worth nothing in the bank anymore, and who never gets bonuses ;)

Prof: Carbon sequestration 'as bad as nuclear waste'

phil harris

What a bunch of twats scientists are

All we really need to do is grow more trees again and all that co2 will get turned into wood, again.

Someone tell me that its not really that simple ?

British laggards told to embrace their digital futures

phil harris
Grenade

Dont you just love statistics !

Firstly, the figures with demographics starting at age 18 lose about 25% of the 60 million population, so that makes _about_ 6.7 million not 8.9 million. (And that's simple arithmetic not maths by the way ;) )

Secondly, the judgement 'had not improved their lives' will be a balance, not 'there is nothing I like about I.T.' (And that's simple english language by the way ;) )

Thirdly, since when have computer geeks _ever_ been qualified to understand what real people want ?????

Oh, I'm 54 and earn my living writing software, and my wife works from home on a quad-cpu system system with about 2TB of storage.

Our problem is the cr_p state of the BT network out in the countryside which makes it very difficult for a large percentage of the population to actually realise those cr_p statistics of the Internet's power which modern (young, wet-behind-the-ears) software authors expect everyone to have.

'Thieving' sperm whale caught on CCTV

phil harris
Coat

Spot the lack of Biologists on hte Editorial Team !

What ?

No-one noticed that the Sperm Whale pics are upside down ?

Or ... do they really swim around upside down :o

That's far more interesting than a bunch of fishermen moaning about the size of their catch when they get it all for free anyway.

Play.com blames supplier for graphics card mishap

phil harris

sometimes mistakes do happen ... indeed

And I wont ever be shopping with play.com because I only found out they existed when they billed my credit card account ... twice ... without me even knowing who they were.

It seems to me that they are a company that doesnt bother with details ... like verifying credit card numbers before they use them ... and now it seems that they dont check what a customer ordered is what they are shipping.

But, as you allude to, its only a shop, what more do you expect ?

Appraisals are dishonest, waste of time

phil harris

And ...

Yet another process is identified as going wrong because it focuses on the wrong thing.

Its the concept of management getting involved with their people in order to help them get the best job done that is required.

Easy ! Isnt it ?

Instead, the focus that IIP pushes is on make-sure-you-do-this-yearly !

So, the big, (and not-so-big), stupid, corporates alienate their people by pushing management to do another thing they dont understand how to do properly.

Anyway, I think the only people who are good at reviews are the ones who really dont want to do management in the first place !