* Posts by Rob Morton

16 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Jul 2009

Free online Uni courses pressure vendors to drop training costs

Rob Morton

Already there - IBM certification you just pay the test fee to the testing agency. Same with qualifications like SCJP though it's still a good idea to buy the official book.

Where were the bullet holes on OS/2's corpse? Its head ... or foot?

Rob Morton

Re: The other part was the hardware mistake.....

MCA was killed off by marketing who wanted to sell boxes. I was at a talk by Chet Heath, the MCA architect where he talked about the "guest" card - an MCA card with a 386sx, a VGA chip and keyboard and mouse ports. Plug 3 into a PS/2 and you had a mini 4-person server. Cue massive panic in Sales. And so on.

IBM insider: How I caught my wife while bug-hunting on OS/2

Rob Morton

Re: Hursley was a great place

I remember talking to one of the developers of that email system and she told me they were ordered to deliver everything to the minimum spec screen - which was a 3277 24x80 monochrome - not just not support it but block all other features. The mail editor was actually the pretty powerful and customizable xedit editor with the worlds worst profile. Swap in your own profile and it was ... better.

The Notes systems they switched to were actually quite good, especially in Hursley where we had some people who knew what they were doing working on them until the BGC decided it all had to be standardized. Didn't impact me as my email address was redirected to my aix box where I read it with elm - fastest email program I've ever used and could actually keep up with speed at which I went "bollocks" - delete - next - "bollocks" - etc.

I kept OS/2 for years so I could keep playing Galactic Civilizations. Apparently the OS/2 product owner hated the idea of games on his OS. Stardock tried to get IBM to let them support a client version of OS/2 but IBM said they couldn't do it as they "couldn't generate a part number". Give how they could do that for PCs put together out of random stock at Greenock I find this a curious response.

http://www.stardock.com/stardock/articles/article_sdos2.html

Neurotrash creativity 'expert' created Dylan quotes from thin air

Rob Morton

Quote

As Albert Einstein observed "If you have a weak argument, just make up a quote and attribute it to some famous dead dude".

Vanity Fair on Microsoft's "Terrible Management Technique" - stacking

Rob Morton

Vanity Fair on Microsoft's "Terrible Management Technique" - stacking

http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2012/07/03/the-terrible-management-technique-that-cost-microsoft-its-creativity/

“Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, "

Stephen Fry's Pushnote goes titsup

Rob Morton

Re: insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result

As Alan Turing once said "If you're stuck, just make stuff up and attribute it to some famous dead bloke."

iPad typos are Apple's fault, not yours - new claim

Rob Morton

Anecdotal?

"You keep using that word. I do no think it means what you think it means" Watch the video. Specifically watch as "image" ends up on the screen. You see the "I" flash then the space bar flash very briefly but is not passed to the app then the "h" flashes and again is not passed to the app. That's not anecdotal.

Spillover from 400lb man squeezed fellow flier into galley

Rob Morton

"I'm sorry but I can't raise my armrest for medical reasons" then engage the bullshit generator.

Verity's secret shame revealed

Rob Morton

may I suggest A for aisle and I for Isle?

Cameron backs public inquiry into NotW hacking claims

Rob Morton

On press silence

Decent article in the spectator

http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/7075673/what-the-papers-wont-say.thtml

COBOL drinks from cloudy fountain of youth

Rob Morton

OO COBOL?

Should that be ADD 1 TO COBOL. ?

My lost Cobol years: Integrating legacy management

Rob Morton

Hardly news

An old idea applies here - concentrator networks and then something at the top to coordinate it all like Interlink's BES which I use as a manager of managers for zSeries, pSeries, windows, tandem etc etc.

Systems monitoring: what’s possible, and what really happens

Rob Morton

What John said

plus there are tools that allow monitoring of business services such as HP's BAC and RUM and Optier, all of which and the technology monitoring can then be integrated in tools like Interlink's BES. But yes, it is hard to get IT guys to stop thinking in terms of the servers and in terms of the services which just happen to run on them.

Vampires not good role models for Catholics, declares Vatican

Rob Morton

How it should have ended

http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j63/mentalwheaties/twilight.jpg

Glasgow unbans Life of Brian

Rob Morton

Not banned in the posh suburbs

My then girlfriend's sister drove us out to Bearsden to watch it and, as I recall, nearly crashed us 5 times coming back due to laughing fits.