Hmm..
If it's only for new starters, then really, shouldn't Jaqui's replacement really be the first to get one after Monday's reshuffle???
Posts by Mark Edwards
13 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Dec 2008
Airport ID cards only for the newbies
Cobol hits fifty
Thursday 28th May 2009 20:53 GMT 
Ahh ... fond memories ....
Happy Birthday COBOL .... god it's been a long, long time since I've looked at any COBOL code (1991 IIRC) but I have fond memories of it (apart from having to first hand-write listings on those damn tedious ANSI COBOL coding sheets.
As many others on here have already pointed out - it's a fine, easy language to code in and is generally rock-solid in implementation.
I distinctly remember one project I worked on - rewriting writing a secure UNIX shell in C after it had been written by an in-house developer who had been writing COBOL code for 10 years, then learnt C in a weekend (or so he thought). The whole program listing when it was handed over to me was one single monolithic main() function with jumps to labels all over the place - the poor sod had written his program in as close a manner as he could get C to look like COBOL (including loads of #defines to make the language work like COBOL where it wouldn't naturally flow).
Took me two weeks just to figure out what the bloody thing was doing before embarking on recoding it in a more succinct and C friendly style ...
... happy days.
Old school music sales fell 8% last year
Wednesday 22nd April 2009 12:10 GMT 
Falling sales does not necessarily equal piracy
When on earth will the music companies learn?
Physical media sales fall as more and more people get on the digital distribution train. However, digital distribution generally means that people are free to buy whatever tracks they please.
Now, if the average CD has (say) 12 tracks on it, generally I find that there's only around 60% of the music on there that I think is really good and would go out of my way to buy if it were sold separately ... with some of the tat that the major record companies punt out this might be down to only one or two tracks per album.
So, if I'm only buying 2 tracks or (going up to the 60% figure) even 8 tracks at < £1 each, as opposed to a physical CD costing in excess of a tenner, then I'm not surprised that there is a void in the revenues.
Wake up music biz ... stop punting the latest telent(less) show winner/lowest common denominator trash and put out some decent music for once ... then, people will start to buy more of it.
/rant off.
Mine's the one with the Sennheiser reference headphones and the Arkham CD player in the pocket
White wine stains your teeth too
Short bursts of The Reg at work increase your productivity
Microsoft kills MSN Encarta
Tuesday 31st March 2009 10:14 GMT 
'Tis a shame though
Wikipedia, useful resource though it is, suffers from the problem that it's articles are not necessarily properly researched and cited.
Its a worry that a proper reference encyclopaedia (can I use that phrase when it comes to Encarta?) feels it needs to be killed off in deference to the Wikifiddlers.
/evil Bill becase we don't have an evil Ballmer...
Action games 'improve eyesight'
'I HOPE YOUR HOUSE IS NEAR THE SEA HAHAHAHA!!!!'
HDTV 'pointless' without perfect peepers
Thursday 15th January 2009 17:14 GMT
Hmm...
I smell an optician trying to gain some free advertising here. I suffer from bad eyesight (incredibly long sighted in one and partially long sighted in the other) and have no trouble seeing the difference when looking at 1080p streams when compared to lesser formats...
Boffin because he's wearing specs (why else?)
419ers take Canadian for $150,000
Prisoner star Patrick McGoohan dies at 80
Thursday 15th January 2009 14:10 GMT 
We can treat folly with kindness . . .
. . . knowing that soon his wild spirit will quieten, and the foolishness will fall away to reveal a model citizen (No2 to No6 -- The Prisoner, Dance of the Dead)
RIP Mg McGoohan ... looks like you managed to escape the village after all.
... be seeing you.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
