They were given by President Nixon - I mean if you can't trust Nixon, who can you trust?

Re: Did Apple

But not with the BBC's 90 years of the BBC exhibition

http://www.bbc.co.uk/historyofthebbc/collections/bbc_collection/collection_archive_tech.shtml

It does seem a tricky claim to defend = "The patent has value because the icon is so obviously and instantly recognisable as a microphone'

Re: @Tom Parsons

>Are you really suggesting we should be teaching school children how to program an OS?

Actually yes - http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1913

What's more important is teaching them that an OS is just a bit of software written by normal people. And that a computer isn't a magic box. Then the next time a home secretary announces a new computer security system that will decide who is guilty automatically - there might be some public skepticism.

It's the same for other subjects. Do most students need to know the difference between 'S' and 'P' orbitals? No, but they should know that Daily Mail headlines of "OMG chemicals in our food" can just mean water. Some idea about statistics and the range and effects of microwaves might also be useful.

Re: I am Legend of Coders!

Or the value of the products they produce would be enough to pay them a reasonable wage.

There is a reason we have Rolls Royce jet engines built in Britain and Nike trainers made in China - it's something to do with the skills needed to do the job and the value of the finished product.

Re: Some good points, but not that many...

DVI-VGA adaters only work for DVI-A where there are VGA signals are on the spare DVI pins. The RPi doesn't have any VGA signal hardware on board.

VGA is an analogue signal and needs real power electronics, DACs and amplifiers unlike purely digital DVI/HDMI

Re: Why?

Still doesn't explain why people live in Slough

Re: Why does programming have to be in 'IT' lessons?

Programming should be the start of maths teaching - definitely

It gets even worse in a physics degree, you spend 3years learning all the tricks to solve the tiny subset of differential equations that can be solved on a blackboard. You start a Phd and are told - pick Matlab or Mathemtica

Re: I always thought the point of the Rpi

The point of the RPi is exactly the same reason we got Apple IIs and then PCs 30years ago.

You have PCs in your school but you certainly can't let kids install apps or have admin access, in fact you can't let teachers have admin access because the PCs are under a service plan from whatever "Research Machines Ltd" is called today and any changes involve renegotiating their agreement and them charging you 500quid to come out and install virtualbox.

You couldn't let children learn by fiddling around with the council mainframe we got dialup access to in the 70s so we bought home computers and PCS. Now you can't let them fiddle around with PCs we have under service agreements, so you need single board embedded machines.

Re: No RPi please

Or Access or Powerpoint, or Word ? I think this is how we got to ICT in the first place.

Re: Buy a decent PSU, and have a suitable (NOT WATER) fire extinguisher handy!

A real BOFH's bedroom would have Halon

Re: Bah!

But they were commies - it doesn't count. What science needs is to show how long republicans can spend in space.

Re: They slipped up

Because you only need to get approval for it's intended use. Unlike medical/aviation where you also need to prove that it's approved even in un-intended or fault conditions.

This came up with Linux wifi drivers. A commercial operating system manufacturer (mentioning no names) claimed that they should be illegal because some "hacker" could reprogram them to an un-approved state

Re: The real savings are surprising.

Most of these places are flyin-flyout. You work 7 /10/14 days on and the same off, you live on site and get all meals provided - like an oil rig. The food is good though - surf''n'turf is an easy way to keep your staff happy!

But the site is completely dry - nobody driving 300tonnes of truck worth $5M is getting anywhere near a beer, and expect to get your luggage seriously inspected for drugs - even if you are just a programmer going in to fix something.

If you can handle the boredom of driving at 10km/h for the same 15min round trip for a 12hour shift - you make more than I do as a programmer and half half the year at home.

Re: As far as I'm aware, "GPS" won't work underground.

Mining is a fascinating well paid and generally safe job in most civilised countries ( well Australia and Canada) at least if you stay out of coal mining. Compared to construction or forrestry where people seem to go out of their way to try and kill themselves, deep hard-rock mining is safe as houses.

The main drawback is that the mines are generally in the middle of nowhere, in the sort of town where a fancy night out is the hot dogs at the gas station - they dream of one day getting a McDonalds

Re: uhm...

At least you got C++, we (a world top5 university) couldn't get a copy of any sort of compiler out of IBM for OS2.

Their attitude was basically, if you want to buy a mainframe - fine, if you want to buy any other IBM product go **** yourself.

Eventually we gave up, switched to buying Dec-Alpha PCs running NT, wiping them and installing linux. Why Dec alphas running NT were a fraction of the cost of Alphas running VMS or Ultrix is the reason Dec isn't around today either.

Re: Just a silly question: ISS photography?

The ISS doesn't do photography, the nearest it does is one of the tourists (commercial or national space agency) pointing their cell phone out of the window. There are lots of commercial photo and radar earth resources satelites imaging the planet.

The issue isn't does it exist now (it doesn't) - it's why was it ever on the charts.

Re: The Future

Airbus now has a single pilot + dog cockpit. The pilot is there to feed the dog - and the dog is there to bite the pilot if they try and touch the controls

Re: China will be down there soon ...

Surely we should claim it.

All small islands on the other side of the globe must belong to Britain or what's the Royal Navy for?

Of course if when you get there you find a volcano and a column of palm trees going past a swimming pool you should leave Tracey Island alone.

Re: robots

So one day we could have a little line of robot miners, being truncheoned by a baton charge of robotic police?

So the poor Apple shareholders can take some of their money and put it into a good investment - like Apple stock??

Re: Anyone want to argue that he earns every penny?

Well you need to pay the big bucks to get somebody good.

Our local transit authority decided to hire a big shot corporate CEO from private industry rather than a council worker - and paid $1M/tear salary. But the service has become an expensive series of disasters - a salutory lesson in what happens to a company if you don't pay $50M for your CEO.

Re: Quite a paypacket...

Paid for by all the investment banks, pension funds and insurance companies that buy Apple stock - so ultimately lots of little old ladies.

Re: It's simpler than that

>Wordprocessors, Spreadsheets, etc. are decades old - where is the corporate innovation that people will pay for

More ribbons, in fact an entire screen covered in ribbons.

Then they can invent some new confusing gui widget that only shows you the ribbons that have recently used

Re: "Just like Windows Phone"

It can't be - an army of 1000s of MSFT programmers have spent 3years and billions of $$$ producing the innovative user interface that is metro.

How can a small group of unemployed Nokians have produced anything so similar so quickly and easily?

Re: There was no child abuse before the internet.

Not to mention cars - how many children were abducted using only bicycles - but what have the car makers done to prevent child abuse?

Re: Mixed feelings

>Why companies just don't embrace hackability

Because most consoles are sold at a loss and make back the $$$ in online subscriptions and licenses to games companies.

People using their Xbox/Wii/PS3 as media players tro to play pong are costing Microsoft/Nintendo/Sony $$$ - which is the best reason for doing it !

Re: What amazing modern MS Office facilities do they need?

But if you are using OO internally and mandate open formats (which as an Eu govt you are supposed to do) then incompatibility with MS isn't really an issue. It's like claiming that they should stop using German because it causes problems for English visitors.

There is probably a real (and profitable) market for a Word processor with fixed headline/sub/etc styles and only 2 fonts. A powerpoint clone that doesn't do dissolve/fade animations or fscking sound effects. And for many users - a spreadsheet suitable for doing expenses claims.

I wonder how many Billions have been wasted by people in offices reformatting Word docs - especially idiots that can't use styles (or us geniuses that can't work out how to apply modifications to styles since Office2003). Making fancy powerpoints which include 6 obligatory slides explaining the history or departmental organisation of the company before you get onto the actual info.

Re: What amazing modern MS Office facilities do they need?

How can you possibly run a town without the ribbon. God only knows how the good citizens have been managing for the last 900 years.

It's not the auditors job to say you are an idiot for paying $12Bn for this company.

It's the auditors job to say that their sales/costs/profits are what they claimed.

In practice there is bound to be some detail of non-transferable license revenue counted under the non-reccuring monthly account instead of the semi-deprciated (I'm making this shit up) pre-tax forecast .... to allow them to claim that they were misled.

Re: Easy?????

That's the other approach - the Avagadro project.

Make sphere that's perfectly round to within a few nm and contains only silicon atoms with no impurities - then measure it's diameter (easy) and count the number of atoms in it (relatively easy)

Re: note to self

>... if ever employed by a company being taken over by ANYONE, run away.

Unless it's purely a parent company level "Marathon is now Snickers" thing you are screwed.

After all, the new owners must be better/smarter/etc than you because they were the ones that took YOU over.

So unless you are a senior CXO at the victim with some golden handcuffs you are automatically at the bottom of the pile in the new organisation.

Re: history shows rationale for outlook

So another way to put it - lots of Taxpayer funded government research over the last 60years has been rolled up and turned into something you have to pay for?

Actually I worked with people from TWI and they are very helpful and profesional - unlike the similar setup at QinietiQ

Re: Appalling

Today Germany announced 10Billion euro subsidy to build cheaper cars, only German car companies were allowed to bid to receive the money - VW Golf's will go on sale across europe for 5grand.

How would you feel if you worked for a UK car plant?

Re: Meanwhile, on the other side of the river...

Civil engineers have saved more lives than all the doctors in history.

Re: Android SDK needs to be free

Android wasn't invented at Sony - Or to put it in Sony corporate speak: "

ner ner ner can't hear you , there's no such thing as Android, I can't hear you, I got my fingers in my ears, ner ner ner"

Re: innovate or acquire?

>the likelihood is that they will be able to recover very little so the impact of the negative publicity / >embarrassment if this is exaggerated or manufactured would far outweigh any remedy they might get.

Given a choice between, "those Brits lied to us and it's all the accountants fault" and "

the former CEO, that we the board put in place, went on a mad spending spree for anyone that could spell cloud because we have no idea how to innovate anymore"

Which is goign to sound better in a report to Wall St?

Re: Remastered for iTunes

Yes I'm also worried that the melody in many of the more choral pieces will lose the subtle undertone of harmony ....

It's ****ing AC/DC !

You still make phone calls on your phone?

I suspected the next iPhone wouldn't actually have a microphone and nobody would notice.