Posts by Andrew 98

German prosecutor given Das Boot over Netzpolitik treason charge

Re: what ship? I see no ship

Surely not the first time 'Das Boot' has landed someone in deep water.

Is it barge? Is it a data center? Mystery FLOATING 'Google thing'

Disaster Recovery?

If it is to stay in the area, a floating data-centre may seem a brilliant idea if / when the next earthquake hits the San Fransisco area. Not sure about Tsunamis though.

Metric versus imperial: Reg readers weigh in

Re: Confused by all these people banging on about a French system

So some folk want to avoid the Metric "French" system of weights by sticking with Imperial Avoirdupois?

Hmm

New UK curriculum ramps up lessons in SPAAAACE

Re: Too much added, not enough removed

"The amount of times I've had to correct native English speakers..."

I know about common usage, but does anyone else cringe when the word 'amount' is used instead of 'number'?

Swiss, German physicists split the electron

Tricky things electrons

A hydrogen proton went into a bar complaining that he'd lost his electron.

"Are you sure?" asked the barman

"Yes, I'm Positive!", wailed the proton.

Sorry.

Germans increase office efficiency with 'cloud ceiling'

@perlcat

"with the proper womb-like atmosphere of pipe smoke and stale beer."

Your mother must have been quite remarkable.

BT, Scotland Yard form copper theft crackdown supersquad

Copper Coppers?

OK. Cu

Fukushima scaremongers becoming increasingly desperate

Job for Lewis?

With Lewis' impressive amount of spin, someone wrap him in copper wire, stick him between the poles of a big magnet and he could generate more than enough electricity to replace a reactor or two.

My lost Cobol years: Integrating legacy management

Sometimes the best choice isn't fashionable

A program that has run reliably for nearly 20 years needed amending for changing business requirements. Half an hour of COBOL, it is up and running and everyone is happy. (And yes I admit, I enjoyed it!) Re-writing in something more modern would have taken several days for no added business benefit. There's life in the old dog yet.

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

Shell-fish?

Sorry.

No wonder CompSci grads are unemployed

Encourage the problem-solvers

The problem starts in school long before university: Programmers are not created by teaching how to use MS Office or answering questions like "what is a spreadsheet?" You need to get them writing simple code and getting the satisfaction when the damn thing works. An IT course with without programming is not an IT course.

Sadly, the way of thinking for IT seems to be better served by music syllabuses involving composition than IT courses. (That may sound daft at first, but music is about form, structure and obtaining a satisfying result using the syntax available: Anyone who enjoys harmonising Bach chorales can make a decent living as a programmer.)

IT needs engaged problem-solvers: turning them off the subject dilutes the talent available for the future job-market.

Mozilla upsets net world order with Bing on Firefox

Search conundrum

Both Google and Bing are rather good at returning relevant results and both engines require huge and expensive infrastructures to make this happen (paid for by advertisers, the information we provide and companies wishing to know more about their customers).

Monopolies are generally a bad idea and competition helps encourage the big-guys to concentrate and play nice (think IE6). Hopefully Bing will encourage Google in this respect and Mozilla's inclusion of Bing can only help this process.

We can dream of a Mozilla-type native total privacy-protected search engine but making this happen and break-even would be a much more difficult task than producing Firefox itself.

Still, it's nice to dream.

Check Point defends ZoneAlarm scareware-style warning

Still disappointed

Do checkpoint really think this is going to encourage us to recommend their products to corporates when the firm tries such a low technique to hoodwink a few sales from home-users?

ZoneAlarm slammed for scarewarey marketing

Disappointing

I used to think highly of the product and have used and recommended Zone Alarm in the past. Alarming non-IT folk is not clever: those of us who are asked and give advice get part of the blame. It makes ZoneLabs look bad too. Shame on you Checkpoint.

Vulture Central plans Brit-Yank dictionary

@The Welsh

Quite rare, and furthermore, only with those for export to be eaten by Englishmen!