No Maths Requirement

Bit harsh! A review of the page suggests that a GCSE grade C or above is required!

Mind you an A-level grade B in Art is more important looking at the list :-|

You take the Exchange servers, the four 'redundant' ADFS servers, the corporate website and for the hack of it the corporate SQL Server too, virtualise the lot onto a single piece of tin. If you haven't heard something similar from your business beancounters, do not quit - you're already in the best job out there.

Awww - you must be gutted. Keep some hair trimmings to put on LOHAN, a metaphoric sky burial.

West coast is waking up now - will they be pleased or sell?

-10% at the mo - think there may have been some big meetings before lunch today about how to prop up the share price.

Google generic term...

Oooohhh that is an intersting one. Spam no longer specifically refers to Hormel's pink stuff, hoover is used interchangeably with vacuum cleaner, etc.

Yes, clearly looks like the guy was squatting in poor faith, but it'll be inetresting who can be the first person to make it stick that 'to google' is a generic term :-|

On the one hand...but on the other...

Planes have been fly-by-wire for a long time, the pilot hints to the onboard computer what he wants it to do, it polls its friends, and if they all agree, they do what the pilot asked.

On the other hand FUUUUUUCCCKKK! NOOOOOOO!! How terrifying is that to let loose? Aviation works because the rules are strictly followed (eg different flight levels for flying N-S than S-N, for instance), and those rules built up over decades of accidents, improving each time; and because the planes cost millions in avionics and robust ADA.

Google, gorblessit, is hell-bent on everything being a 'cloud service' with always on-ness to try to simulate a clunky spreadsheet in a browser. They tell us this is the only way, that it is the future. Want a car that polls the server before braking? OK, of course it will have to be autonomous, but seeing as how many of Google's offerings either publically carried the 'Beta' tag for years or crashed and burned, the corporate culture doesn't seem one I would want to trust with anything life-threatening.

Great idea

Would Brewster Kahle be eligible for Archive.org as well? Or is that more cultural/content based?

Passport to Pimlico

Yep, an old black and white British comedy explored many of the issues wonderfully - give it a watch if you spot it on on a Sunday afternoon. Real little classic.

Cheapie Panasonic

Thanks to Amazon, BNIB Panasonic doc feeder/scanner/printer/copier momo, networked and USB for under a ton including VAT and delivery. Without doc feeder (ie flatbed only) only £70. Very happy with it, so look further than the top 10 list here

With everyone pointing in one direction shouting 'look'...

I can't help but feel the real story lies in the other direction, behind a big screen of smoke...

My fullest commiserations to his family, no matter what else, he died a horrible death and it must be mortifying for his family to see all this in the papers.

I would not be in the least bit surprised if in 50/75/100 yrs time when the files are released to the public he turns out to be a very different character from how we are seeing him protrayed right now. But *anyone* working for GCHQ / SIS has my respect, for generally taking risks hoping to improve the world in some way.

Hardware qwerty keyboards FTW

When my G1 contract was up, I had to hang around a while in network limbo to get a HTC Desire Z when they were released, and so not regret it a moment. As my contract is currently counting down, I am starting to get anxious about what will replace the Desire Z - fashions have moved well away from hardware qwerty's (although if the iPhone5 has one, every f'cker will suddenly want one, and Apple fanbois will tell you they invented them) towards slower, clumsier on-screen keyboards.

Too little too late

A few years back they'd have taken the whole market - but with offerings like sugarsync providing not just web backup not just single root folder sync like dropbox, simpler to set up than spideroak, Google could really hit a home run by emulating their model and crushing the competition

Backplate - if it was neatly parabolic (or had a curved bit of it to channel off part of the gases at least), it could spray nice hot exhaust gases over the titanium rod, making sure icing isn't a problem for long.

Nobody learned a thing

In what we will in the future call the first dotcom boom and bust, lots of successful companies lost a lot of money by believing that having lots of users was a good thing. This was because you multiplied an arbitrary constant by the number of users, and it gave you a 'value'. Reality is it gives you a cost. The more successful YouTube it, the more it costs Google to run it, for instance. Anyway, lots of companies changed hands at stupid money because it was a (pretty flipping blatant) bubble. It turned out a registered user was not worth the $1000 'value' fantasists said they were.

Anyone remember Marconi? They put cash in the dotcom boom, now they are owned by the French company Thales. BT made £100/sec profit at one point, they spunked a load of it on dotcom nonsense. Murdoch's balls were $650M or something lighter for this thing very few people will remember as relevant 'MySpace' (GeoCities++). Friendsreunited seemed like a good buy for a once rich ITV.

Clearly we are much smarter now, and would never overvalue a company which could be irrelevant within a year if the tides turn (as fads/fashions do)! Me, I'm going back to pork bellies futures and tulip bulbs - at least you know your cash is as safe as houses.

Good luck to him

Them who live by the patent shall die by the patent

As Apple are busy being c*nts to other manufacturers with their howthefuckisthatpatentable patents, it seems only right this guy with good prior art should retire on this.

Something different...

Quite a way from your regular sci-fi spaceships in the future stuff, I REALLY enjoyed Margaret Atwood's "Oryx and Crake" and also "Year of the Flood" (both stories run kinda parallel in the same near-future world - she's writing the third of the trilogy at the mo). If you are looking for the intersection between "literature" and sci-fi, this is it, very classy work, exquisitely researched and imagined, but with superb characterisation too. She's good at characterisation.

Right now I'm reading "Flowers for Algernon", which was apparently a set text in US schools for a while, but I'd never read it. Worth a read, you'll find it for pennies online.

I know!

1) He'd spend a mint on a pointless service with negligible revenue opportunities

2) He would eventually realise this

3) He would start tinkering with it to try to make it money-making

4) It would be fucked.

5) All the cool kids would use Spoffer, or whatever the next fad was.

6) Everyone expect News Group would notice, and jump on Spoffer

Bonus # 7) The Daily Mail headline engine would have a new poster child (Spoffer causes/cures cancer, etc)

Either that, or he's hoping to use the 140-character format to carry all the useful information carried in your daily Sun.

Masturbation

Surely the predominant smell of a new iProduct being opened is that of 'Harry Monk', to borrow from our Cockney chums.

Of course they are bidding - they have an obligation to shareholders to do so.

They may well have the best bid too (including long-term support etc - hard to argue that they're short-term flash-in-the-pan).

Front?

I can see a whole screen area I could probably kill with a well-swung screwdriver.

You can make bullet-proof glass that would protect it from a 9mm round at 1m - but it's about 2" thick in itself.

Twisting/moments/jamming

My apprehensions -

Things in the wild will swing and twist

Add some thrust and that increases

So it means that those old sin/cos/tan things come into play in that the thrust will have a component towards the titanium rod which may lead to jamming.

Futurama

Shame it didn't take off to the same extent as The Simpsons, but that may be related to its funniness/cleverness.

South Park still does a decent job most of the time, although it is getting increasingly patchy

I thought The Simpsons should have retired gracefully about 12 yrs ago, I don't even bother watching any more.

Fact is, sometimes you just run out of jokes for any given setup then you jump the shark. Keeping on flogging old formats into the ground stifles creativity, risk, and trying something new.

Moment?

Just a bit concerned when the rockets fire they'll create a moment around the pivot/balloon which means she'll head off in any old direction, quite possibly straight downwards, or into the balloon. May need a bit of attention to make sure that's not the case!

I remember a decade or so ago when mobile phones were stolen much more in the UK than they are now - and someone had this crazy idea of a total network blackout. Seems to work actually rather well - yes some phones still get robbed and end up going to Africa, but nothing like the volume it used to be when the scrotes could mug you for your phone and use it themselves. Instead of having to find a fence offering a pittance.

The people not to piss off, surely?

I mean, GCHQ? Really?! I would not consider myself the smartest or most anonymous Anonymous if I actively tried to piss off the boys with the BIG toys. You don't throw pebbles at the guy with a gun.

Faraday bag?

Sounds like a solution to a non-problem? Without a battery the phone won't be doing a lot of network access anyway, will it? Remote wipe and no-ping aside, processors revert to being fancy bits of sand without a dash of leccy.

Also this one

http://www.b3ta.com/links/Goggle_Project_Dangerous_Glasses

One Trick Pony?

They have a hit game (the likes of which have existed before them, but they did it well and got lucky), but not compelling characters. People watch series etc for compelling characters, they need a point of engagement, and frankly I don't see that with the Roxio stable. Go on, name some birds, and tell me its main character traits... Much easier for Disney's lot - Mickey (happy go-lucky, enthusiastic, all-American), Donald (cheeky, often frustrated), you get the idea.

Romance scam victims

Many mules are doing favours for their new internet 'loves'. Combine a lonely female with a dream romance and a lack of understanding how banking systems work - easy pickings for scammers.

419eater.com needs you!

Hershey chocolate is like eating brown crayons

10 yrs on...

10 years after I finished a 6 month contract at a place, I am still occasionally called back to provide support when the lead dev goes on holiday - that is a good reason to keep a copy of any source somewhere, now and again it comes back as useful reference!

codenamed 'Operation Hackerazzi'

I thought the point of having operation names was to obfuscate, not clarify the point of the operation. Why not go the whole hog and call this Operation Johanssens Email?

Give the girl a chance! She may be brilliant - I didnt hold much hope for Smith and rather enjoy him now.

Hipster factor?

If it looks nearly the same, how are the hipsters going to show the surrounding world they spanked a few hundred quid on a nice screen? Isn't that the whole point of queueing for iStuff? To show it off like people care?