Posts by Philip Lewis

Re: Mmmm... Fortran...

My university student number, still "tatooed on the ack of my neck" was 761 nnnn denoting my first year as 1976. So I was very definitely alive at that time, and have been "computing" since 1978 IIRC, RSTS/E on the PDP 11/70 IIRC.

FORTRAN and I never got on. After a chance meeting with a very large and quite sohpisticated business accountig/payroll/project mangement ... system, completely written in FORTRAN (I am a caps guy too), though largely via generated code, I owed that I would avoid it. For this sin I was sent to the purgatory of PASCAL for quite some time, a pig of a language IMHO. Many things followed, but these days I avoid writing code alogether. The children in the office do that.

Re: Mine's the one with a a reference 5712G-001 up the sleeve

@bitterbug

a) Patek has a fine and well deserved reputation

b) So could many people who do not own one. Like you, they probably never will

c) Watches, cars, fine china, antiques, classic cars ... these are just things. Those interested in them, will make the effort to own and enjoy owning them.

You probably wouldn't feel any different wearing a Patek or any of the more discrete top end timepieces. Trust me, except for people with an interest, no one will notice or care. On the other hand, were you to kit yourself out with a Rolex Presidential or some other hideously ostentatious watch, well aside from deserving gaol time for poor taste, you will probably feel pretentious and the bling will attract, well people who are attracted to bling. Not really the people I would want to attract personally.

I don't have too many pocket watches. Very fine pocket watches can be had for quite small sums if you look around and buy well.

Re: 5712G-001

And many times that for a car without a roof and only two seats to drive at weekends in summer.

Your point is?

I am reasonably confident that should I ever be short of a quid, I will be able to redeem my watch (and my car) collection(s) for considerably more than I paid for them. In the mean time, I will enjoy the pleasures of ownership.

And by the way, people with more disposable cash than you, are not twats because they spend (or invest) their cash in expensive items. Granted, there is the odd twat around, but they would be twats with or without their spending pattern.

Re: 5712G-001

Well, actually I bought it while my 3700/1A was in for a restoration (not the Timex). And for those who don't quite understand, I have had the 3700/1A since I bought it in 1978. I would suggest you research how much I paid for it versus how much they are traded for at the moment, then figure out what that amounts to in %/year in value. You might be surprised what you find out.

Buy well, and you can enjoy owning something rather nice and use it, then sell it 30 years later and have as much in hand as if you had never bought it and thrown the money in the bank. Buy junk, and you can throw it away when you are bored with it or it breaks, or perhaps hope for a few shillings on eBay.

It is pretty clear which option I prefer.

The same goes for cars.

Re: Mine's the one with a a reference 5712G-001 up the sleeve

I have quite a few time pieces, new and antique, cheap and not so cheap. That was the one I had on when I posted.

Either you had to look it up or you know what it is. Someone who knows what it is would likely not comment. Someone who had to look it up has probably never seen one either. The reference (pun intended) was for the benefit of the first group, and to troll the second. After all, the thread is a response to a patently moronic statement, so anything goes really.

Finally, "watch snobbery" would only work if the ones being snobbed (?) upon can actually recognise an expensive timepiece. Trust me on this, most people have no clue and don't want to know.

Anglophiles! (was Re: So thats about ...)

Most of the world does not have English as their primary teaching language - get over it.

Publishing & printing textbooks in minor languages is expensive! Try buying a library of textbooks for a university education written in a minor language sometime - think passing kidney stones.

Publishing textbooks on ANY tablet is a solution to the first part of this expensive exercise, and it is not a one time saving.

One might argue for an ePaper book reader, but looking forward, colourful eBooks on a tablet, with an interactive component are an obvious development eminently suitable to the educational environment. Add to that educational mind games etc. and there are many reasons to move toward a tablet solution.

Re: Android is leaky by design

Yes, were i ever to own an android device, it would have Cyanogenmod android installed sans google apps and with Privacy Guard. In a perfect world, all mobole OSs would be like this by law, but alas, we live soe,where else

Re: I wish ...

"They may be one of the few I can make work by swiping my penis on it, however. "

... bacause enquiring minds need to know!

Re: whack-a-samsung-hammer

Fuck, another false dichotomy fallacy!

R&D at Apple AND Samsung is completely unaffected by how much budget legal department has. These two things are unrelated logically and in fact.

This is a regular and stupid argument proposed by netizens constantly, proving the thesis that many people are not astute enough to recognise their own stupidity.

Re: I don't know about that

"Spain, France & Italy aren't terribly rich at the moment."

Actually, I think all the EEGs should be in the 'not terribly rich' bucket

"halfwitted fandroidism"

for a moment I thought litotes, but the I realised it was hyperbole

Re: Wait a minute...

Sony are already up to their second generation and the first gen predated the Galaxy by quite some time.

Do try to keep up. And perhaps you might shed some of the ignorant bias as well.

Re: It's part of a bigger picture

"Apple is floundering "

Wow, that is statement so removed from reality that it is mind boggling.

(removed original post with incorrect quote)

Re: I want Windows 7 back because I prefer to be slow!!!

The improvements in Windows 8 at the actual OS level are many and it is certainly a good evolution upwards from Windows7. What we all want, is the Windows7 user interface available on the Windows8 OS core. It is not about the "Start Menu". It is about a zillion things that have become byzantine in the half-assed "Metro" interface. We get paid, some of us quite handsomely, to do clever and complex stuff that is important and from which our employers derive business advantage, enabling them to pay our salaries.

We are not paid by Microsoft to fuck around all day fighting a user interface that we did not ask for and would dearly love to be shot of!

Re: @John 172

"It's a good job Microsoft have made a web browser so easily accessible in Windows 8, because most people need to use Google every 30 seconds to look up how to do something that was obvious and easy in almost all prior versions of Windows."

That is so fucking true. I have been dicking around with a new 2012 cluster machine today and it was an awful experience and yes I had to google all sorts of things. And that fucking default colour scheme has got to go, asap.

Re: It's part of a bigger picture

I would have thought that the effort "converting Kms to Nautical miles." would be identical to the effort needed to convert Imperial (and by extension US) miles to Nautical miles.

Hell, airplanes measure fuel in in litres and then make caluclations in pounds and measure air speed in knots.

I really don't give a toss, I am equally comfortable with metric and celcius or Imperial and Fahrenheit. Where I get it wrong is when in the US, we have a US gallon, a US quart and so on. So personally, if the US started using any other standard for liquid measures, that would be a good start.

Hmmm - quite a bit actually. Including some projects with which I had something to do.

Deutche Börse springs to mind.