Posts by jzlondon

BBC gives naked computers to kids (hmm, code for something?)

Re: Tell me again what problem this solves?

Saying that the BBC Micro wasn't a BBC product is both technically correct and utterly irrelevant.

It was a BBC product in all the important ways. It was promoted by the BBC, it was commissioned by the BBC, it was the BBC's idea to launch a branded computer and accompanying TV series in the first place. The BBC was the reason that so many schools standardised on that model. And the BBC was the driving force behind the decision to make the machine so orientated towards programming and hobby use rather than games focussed like most other machines at the time.

Your comment brings this to mind: http://xkcd.com/1475/

Re: Tell me again what problem this solves?

Yeah, and that BBC Micro back in the 80's? Total failure. Didn't launch a generation of programmers and technologists and punt the UK up to the top end of the IT league for decades, at all....

Re: maths is maths

What is this "joke" you speak of?

Re: Pedantic point of order

No, because Clarkson brought in more than he cost, via licensing fees to other countries. I dislike the man, and am glad he's been sacked, but maths is maths.

Ford to save you from BIKE FITNESS HORROR

Stupid car people

Just the sort of thing you'd expect from a car company and a bunch of people who spend their lives living and breathing cars and petrol. Ridiculous.

What's wrong with just buying a bicycle? There are plenty of really good ones. If you want one that folds, there's a really big choice of those too.

Musk: 'Tesla's electric Model S cars will be less crap soon. I PROMISE'

Yes, but barely. Power required to heat the cabin is tiny compared to the power required to push the car along.

Vodafone Pay TV launch rumoured for November

Re: TV?

In my case, a tongue-in-cheek-ite. I actually have a really old TV which I didn't watch long before not watching TV was fashionable.

TV?

Is that still a thing?

BBC: We'll give FREE subpar-Raspberry-Pis to a million Brit schoolkids

It doesn't need to be complicated

Programming is a very simple art at its core. It's just about learning to plan commands in a structured manner to solve a problem.

Why does it need an HDMI port or a gigabyte of RAM for that? Or even a display for that matter?

Blinking lights seem perfect to me. You can learn to make patterns, etc., without getting distracted by Firefox. It's a very mechanistic, straightforward thing.

Kaspersky claims to have found NSA's 'space station malware'

Job Opening!

Editor required at The Register. Must be able to start immediately.

$17,000 Apple Watch: Pointless bling, right? HA! You're WRONG

Goodness me, a readable article from Tim Worstall. It actually started at the beginning, finished at the end, and didn't assume arcane insider knowledge of the subject.

Good job.

Quantum computers have failed. So now for the science

Re: cool opinion

You beat me to it.

If three qubits works, that shows there's no fundamental problem. Just a question of implementation.

The secret of Warren Buffett's success at Berkshire Hathaway

If everyone was Warren Buffett, then Warren Buffett wouldn't be successful.

Erik Meijer: AGILE must be destroyed, once and for all

Re: How can you code until you've understood the objectives?

Nah. Coding simple proofs of concept and bare bones outlines are a great way of ensuring that the users are actually asking for what they really need.

Re: Productivity and Quality

Bingo. All these methodologies are basically trying to make excuses for bad developers. Don't hire them. Simple.

Re: clearly a friday troll article!

Given how rarely agile is "done properly" in that case, I'd suggest the problem is with agile. If a system gets implemented wrong more than right, the system's bad.

Test driven development is bullѕhit

You just end up with brittle code that everyone's afraid to change or refactor because the tests will break. The tests almost never cover failure scenarios that you're actually going to hit, but go into excruciating detail about stupid edge cases that the developer thought were interesting at the time.

They also take ages to write and they cause you to solidify the design too early because even though you want to change things around you don't because you can't face the thought of re-writing all those tests.

Total and utter bullѕhit.

Mummy, what's the point of Evgeny Morozov's tedious columns?

Re: @ DragonLord

Renting is always more expensive than owning in the long term. Otherwise, why would landlords be in business? Most landlords use mortgages to buy their properties.

Renting provides housing for people who can't raise the capital required to buy. It's necessary. But let's not pretend that it's financially as rewarding as ownership in the long term. It isn't.

Re: Happily resorting to dogmatism :-)

I got the joke. It wasn't funny though.

You know what else is annoying?

Rambling essays which appear to have started halfway through with no introduction to the subject matter or the background. Who the fuсk is Evgeny Morozov?

Apple Pay a haven for 'rampant' credit card fraud, say experts

Re: Bah!

You resigned? That was mature and productive and really showed them how to fix their issues. Well done you.

I don't understand why people are so worried about card fraud. When your card gets cloned, the bank is liable, not you. It's alarming to see large lumps of money leaving your account, I agree, but you'll get it back from the bank.

I know, I know, we all pay for it ultimately. But still.

HTC One M9 hands on: Like a smart M8 in a sharp suit

Looks very nice, I'm sure. But for the last couple of years, high end phones have been good enough. The reasons for being enthusiastic get less and less compelling.

Re: Sounds good!

You know that you can't be forced into a two year contract by anyone, right? At least not outside somewhere like North Korea.

Telly behemoths: Does size matter?

Re: What's my size?

A TV should fit the room and function well as furniture. Big screens struggle with that even in big rooms.

In the UK in particular, there's another force at work. Brits - on average - live in ridiculously small houses.

Jaguar F-Type: A beautiful British thoroughbred

Petrol engine?

Since Tesla launched the Model S, I struggle to get excited about anything with a petrol or diesel engine. It just seems so ... old fashioned.

Microsoft man: Internet Explorer had to go because it's garbage

Re: Not A Competing Product, Really

Safari isn't cross platform.

Well, it runs on iOS and Mac OS, but they're very much part of the same ecosystem. They're also forks of the same OS.

Re: FTFY

Microsoft doesn't write code. People at Microsoft write code. Microsoft is a corporation, not an individual. I doubt that corporate embarassment in front of a small number of non-customer developers is a serious motivating factor for the decision makers at the top of the company.

Re: Makes Sense

Two things about ODF:

1. It sucks monkey balls. Really. It's a bad format.

2. Office file formats in general are becoming less and less important.

Monoculture

Despite the irony of it being said by Microsoft, the danger of a monoculture is all too real. It's important to have multiple rendering engines out there.

Hey Apple - what's the $178bn for? Are you down with OTT?

OTT?

It's annoying when I have to stop reading an article to Google acronyms. Not all of us know as much about the television market as you, so it would be really nice if you could expand the acronym the first time you use it.

Free WiFi coming to UK trains ... in two years

Re: >>Yes, but the train routers have massive aerials.

Trains sets? There's your problem, right there. Try riding on the full size trains instead.

Yes, but the train routers have massive aerials.

And all because the mobile networks are so poor along the train lines that using the internet on a train is like taking a Morris Minor to the Alps.

Microsoft: Hey, don’t forget Visual Basic! Open source and new features coming

Dijkstra was talking about early versions of BASIC. You know, the ones with GOTO, line numbers and no support for structuring.

VB, in its modern incarnation, is an utter world away from that. It's almost identical to C# or Java, but more verbose and without the semicolons and curly brackets.

Honestly, if you're going to have an opinion, it's worth having an informed opinion.

Now Samsung's spying smart TVs insert ADS in YOUR OWN movies

I'd be selling Samsung stock if I owned any. Which I don't.

NERDS KICK PUPPY 'bot in brutal attack

Re: I love

The body language of those dogs was playful. They were having fun, not attacking. If I was the officer, I'd have got out of the car and calmed them down.

Re: That...

Re, PetMan.

Fucking hell.

World's mega-rich tax dodge exposed: Meet the HSBC IT bloke at the heart of damning leak

Many legitimate reasons to hold a Swiss bank account?

1. You're Swiss.

or 2. You live in Switzerland.

Am I missing any others?

$10,000 Ethernet cable promises BONKERS MP3 audio experience

Not the point

This stuff - like all high end "audiophile" stuff - is a veblen good. The only thing that matters is that other people know you can afford it.

First look: Ordnance Survey lifts kimono on next-gen map app

Re: Spotted what's missing?

The second screenshot in the article clearly shows contour lines. It would appear that they can be toggled.

The idea that maps don't cover private property is something that we've learned to accept as a limitation of the Google maps dataset. If you look at paper OS maps, they quite happily show private road layouts.

Re: What happens to users of the current apps?

You're complaining in the wrong place. Write to the Ordnance Survey.

Is EU right to expand 'right to be forgotten' to Google.com?

Re: Taliban

In order for your slippery slope argument to be valid, the Taliban, IS, the Saudis, etc., would have to accept European law as precedent. That doesn't seem likely.

> "it's likely to have to prepare two different versions of .com as a result of this"

Are you suggesting for a second that there's one single version of Google.com at the moment? There are as many different versions as there are consumers.

Enough is enough: It's time to flush Flash back to where it came from – Hell

Re: Legos going pop in the night

I know this is anal, but the plural of Lego is Lego. Not "Legos".

"Lego bricks" if you really must use an S.

Horrifying thought

I really don't want my back account drained outside a qualified medical establishment. What if I was at my desk at work? Think of the mess!