Posts by Allan Hawdon

Shell's London office UNDER WATER and besieged by GIANT EELS

submarine IT

I'm not surprised. I'm now retired, but I worked for about 25 years in IT and every organization

I worked for had their gear in the basement. One of these was by the Thames, like Shell.

The, as it was known then, Machine Room was three floors below the river level. These were

extremely expensive mainframes. Madness.

Spanish bar invites customer abuse

Spanish abuse

After living here for about four years, I still can't get used to shouting "oiga" to get the

bartender's attention. It'll be a while before I get to the above level of creativity, if ever.

Allan

Oiga - Listen! Pay attention!

I wonder if the English "Oi!" as in "Oi, you!" comes from this.

What this has got to do with technology I'm not sure but it makes a break from endless

Intel stories.

UK police bust lottery scam centre in Somerset

scams

I'm inclined to agree with the previous poster. Too many commentators on here just take

the attitude that if you're gullible enough to fall for it, you deserve it. Summed up in the

old cliche "Never give a sucker an even break"

I'm sure many of the victims are just greedy and I don't have much sympathy for them

but plenty more are, as has been pointed out, old and/or vulnerable. I've had a similar

experience with a friend's mother who got very frightened if she didn't reply to official

looking correspondence which was obvious scam. We tried to get her to show us

everything before she thought of replying, but I'm not sure she did.

Allan

Robo-fish to hunt pollution in Spanish seas

robot fish

I'd be more worried about the Spaniards than the sharks. I suspect they'll all end up

on restaurant tables. They don't mind thir seafood crunchy.

Bletchley's Colossus makes beautiful music

Bletchley's Colossus

Pah! Our washing machine has perfect Flamenco rhythm. It can even dance across the kitchen floor on full spin. Let's see Colossus do that.

What if computers went back to the '70s too?

VMS

I worked with VAX/VMS for about 20 years. A more reliable and secure OS you couldn't

wish for. Unlike what passes for an OS on the laptop I'm typing this out on at the moment.

I got out of the business when Unix and Windows took over. It was just too depressing.

Like going back to the stone age. At least VMS felt like it was actually designed and not just thrown together.