That hair...
...is magnificent.
Learning about chip design from Silicon Roundabout
Yesterday would have been the 84th birthday of Robert Noyce - who with Jack Kirby invented the integrated circuit, and who was one of the three founders of Intel. A day to talk about chips, then. The high-risk business of designing microprocessors is fascinating: the cost of failure is enormous, many designs fail to set the …
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Tuesday 13th December 2011 11:32 GMT adam.c
Why don't we have a Nathan icon?
Rule of Thumb - if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and sounds like a duck, it's probably a duck, except using s/duck/wanker/g here
And that bit of regex probably exceeds his total hard technical knowledge)
Please god, someone go along to him for a chat and ask pointed questions about silicon wafer purity, doping, lithography, anything....
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Tuesday 13th December 2011 11:41 GMT Arrrggghh-otron
Nathan Barley as I live and breath!
Someone please throw some paint in his hair!
(Disclaimer for the humourless in these overly sensitive times: This is a reference to a hair style sported by Nathan Barley and not a call to action by random nutters or the easily influenced*, nor do I wish for airports to be blown up etc etc, but now you've spoilt it because if I have to explain it, it isn't funny... but now you've made me analyse it, it probably never was that funny, but that's not the point, the point is you've sucked the fun out of it for all of us. I hope you are happy with the world you've created...)
*If you are easily influenced and do throw paint in sudo Nathans hair I want pics!
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Tuesday 13th December 2011 13:25 GMT Charlie Clark
If you are going to explain you should probably add that Nathan only has paint in his hair because he is copying the hairstyle of his unfortunate (unfortunate because he is idolised without gain by Nathan and others) idol, Dan Ashcroft, who had an accident with a can of paint and had to leave the hairdresser's early... And, yes, Nathan the buffoon is more successful than Dan.
Mine's the one with the Salmon Latte and a copy of Rape magazine and tramp racing betting slip in the pocket.
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Tuesday 13th December 2011 15:11 GMT Charlie Clark
Normally I would say thanks for that but having seen it I'm not so sure.
"Sales people selling to customers" - can't argue with insight like that.
From the clip "One spring morning there was a knock on the door and there was the president of the San Francisco Stock Exchange. And within about half-an-hour we were sitting down discussing my idea..."
Maybe it's true that the chairman of stock exchanges do stroll around London looking for fantastic startups. Though San Francisco's stock exchange isn't of great renown, but why did it take them half-an hour between opening the door and talking business? What happened in the meantime? Rough sex?
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Tuesday 13th December 2011 12:00 GMT Ru
British Comedy ahead of its time...
In the same way that 'Yes [Prime] Minister' seems to show remarkable insight into politics 25 years after the series was started, so 'Nathan Barley' seems to be about our wonderful social media industry 5 years after that series was screened.
I can only hope that Mr. Brooker was not so perceptive as to predict the coming twenty years too, but I'm worried that he's going to be proven correct time and time again.
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Tuesday 13th December 2011 15:07 GMT Hugh Barnard
On a more serious note
I live in the East End and [sometimes] work there. There are plenty of kids in Tower Hamlets that could probably use programming as a way into employment, but they're not benefiting from any of this pretentious, not-very-technical froth.
We've actually got a couple of small Linux-based computer rooms into housing estates along Commercial Road. Maybe we should brand ourselves, Roundabout East?
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Tuesday 13th December 2011 15:12 GMT Alfie
I'm sorry but his I cannot take any man seriously that wears a cravat!
Bad hair and terrible taste in clothing is almost de rigueur in IT, but I have to draw the line somewhere.
I for one, welcome the new Reg Goss section, especially now that we never see anything in the rebranding/joss sticks/whalesong section any more.
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Tuesday 13th December 2011 22:47 GMT Anonymous Coward
I know Charles and although he looks like he dressed himself at a WI jumble sale, he is no Nathan Barley - he actually comes up with some good, original ideas.
So basically, he walks like a duck, but doesn't talk like a duck. Maybe if he dressed like someone important like a gossip columnist or a blogger, he wouldn't attract so much flak. Easy target though. Well done.
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Wednesday 14th December 2011 11:42 GMT Jonathon Green
"I know Charles and although he looks like he dressed himself at a WI jumble sale, he is no Nathan Barley - he actually comes up with some good, original ideas."
Ah. So presumably you'll be able to explain his qualifications for discussing or offering worthwhile commmentary on (to take a random example) U.S. Patents 2875141 "Method and apparatus for forming semiconductor structures" or 3098160 "Field controlled avalanche semiconductive device", not forgetting of course the seminal 2981877 "Semiconductor Device and Lead Structure" then?
Face it, the guy might be very good at whatever the heck it is he does (which as an engineer with a career spanning 25 or so years or so of doing nothing more creative than contributing to actual products which people actually, you know, buy in large numbers I'm probably utterly incapable of understanding) but my perception is that he's way out of his depth here, although clearly not as much so as whichever hapless individual was responsible for the original press release judging by the way they seem to have struggled to present Armstrong's credentials in any relevant manner or otherwise lend any credibility to his perspectives on a career and set of achivements lying firmly within the engineering domain...
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Wednesday 14th December 2011 13:02 GMT Anonymous Coward
I don't know what he knows about semiconductors and I'd take a guess that it is probably outside his field of expertise, but I don't know for sure and nor do all the others piling on here.
I'm not attacking anyone else's credentials as engineers and neither am I belittling them in any way. There's a lot of assumption here based on a bad dress sense/haircut and what it all boils down to is pointing at a kid in the playground that looks different and laughing. Great if you like that sort of thing, but I don't agree with it.
Adam
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
