Re: What model of potato was that taken with.

"If we can spot exo-planets 83 bazillion miles away,"

We're not doing that by just looking at them FFS.

Re: Why doesn't Nintendo

Presumably because then they'd have to actually put real effort into the endevour.

Why not just use the hard work of your customers instead?

Re: Where's the IT angle...

" Where's the IT angle in a phone only "used for TALKING to people"?"

Talking is information and a phone is technology.

Re: Why this wont work.

But, but... only backwards cultures who refuse to bend to the obvious superiority of *our* arbitrary distinctions on what is or is not worthy of being food.

I mean they even eat horses on the continent and they're a lot closer to being as civilised as Brits! You've no hope with those backwards types.

Now excuse me whilst I tuck into my lobster.

Eating arthripods indeed - disgusting.

Re: Do you know how sausages are made...?

People (squeemish Westerners) need to get with the program and realise that they've been eating "bugs" for a long time - they just prefer them from the sea.

Re: Nutritional

> But what about the fact that they're generally rather unsanitary creatures

Yeah - just like those horrible arthipod cousins of theirs - shrimp, prawns, lobsters, crabs...

Re: What's all this rubbish?

The measure of irony in a comment is of course measured in Morisettes.

Re: How about you listen to feedback _before_ you RTM next time?

"Some sort of edition of Windows for Klingons?"

Sounds like the way people are describing their struggles with Windows 8 it is already suitable for a warrior to take on as a challenge.

"Today is a good die for Modern UI to die."

Re: Hmmmmm 3 or 4 hours in my workshop....

But, but... starving, children!

Not that we can say with 100% confidence that the economic velocity of the money spent at the auction might not actually eventually spur on someone to spend something related to not just starving children but all manner of things the OP may approve of.

I mean, come on people. Stop being so damn silly about this.

Re: Crush? or a light fondling.

It's almost like Gartner's analysis is trying to spin a sexy story rather than being, you know, analytical.

Re: Hit Counters

Ah Hit Counters - truly were you what every website needed to have in the early days. What became of you oh indicator of how much people did not visit your personal website? Secret stats collected by website traffic analysis professionals? Pah I say, pah!

Re: I think its you with the problem guvnor

"Garbage In, Garbage Out, "

Your article generator algorithm.

Re: Users buy SOFTWARE, or the ability to run it, not hardware - @cyborg

"Your point was? Just because you weren't offered engineering drawing as an option at school doesn't mean that it doesn't and shouldn't exist"

No. Perhaps try reading what I said.

"The failings of your personal IT training also have nothing to do with it."

<sarcasm>Yes. I do so weep that I have not had the benefit of primary school or secondary school IT training. Because it's really crippled my IT career. </sarcasm>

<-- That would be the point by the way.

"but I don't suggest that this part of the course or something similar should be dropped entirely."

So explain to me how my peers managed to sort this out when PowerPoint didn't even exist when we were in schools?

Could it perhaps be because it's just not even slightly challenging to use for what it is mostly used for? That maybe if there is something more advanced maybe they could get their employer's to train them for it rather than for businesses to expect them to be trained by schools?

"Here's the point you seem to be missing, badly: schools should teach BOTH the theory and the practical."

Here's the point you seem to be missing, badly: your definition of practical is FUBAR.

Re: I'm not sure ...

Anyone who has seen Yes Minister might agree with the idea that the reason for this is that government measures activity, not productivity.

Getting iPads to schools is easy and generates activity. Making them useful... hmmm....

Re: Users buy SOFTWARE, or the ability to run it, not hardware - @cyborg

"The job of the school system is to teach BOTH theoretical and practical subjects."

As what point does using something practical that may not be the thing used by industry sector X make it not practical? This idea is ass-backwards.

"subjects like engineering drawing and IT are pretty relevant."

I don't think I have ever been taught engineering drawing and I didn't learn anything IT relevant from school - if anything I was the one leading the school. Probably not uncommon for anyone of my generation with an interest in computers.

Apparently those with less aptitude of my age can struggle along anyway so I guess it doesn't matter that none of my peers were using the computers of two decades+ in the future because they didn't exist yet either.

"The last thing we want is for one side of the equation to be taught in exclusion to the other, and yes, one of the aims is to prepare students for work in the real world."

And who knows what "the real world" will be like by the time they reach it? Sure as hell the world of IT has changed a lot since I was in primary school. Otherwise I demand compensation for the fact that Folio on the BBC Micro did not prepare me for MS Word!

I do not like this mindset. I would prefer we teach children to think and have adults capable of adapting to the world they find themselves in.

Set expectations low and expect them to be met.

Re: Users buy SOFTWARE, or the ability to run it, not hardware

"As for buying Macs for design work, they should be buying whatever is being used out in the real world so that the students know what they are doing when it comes to getting a job."

Despite what many may think - especially businesses - school is supposed to be an education, not an apprenticeship.

Yes - that seems much more likely than a more famous man been better known than a non-famous man by someone talking about the history of another field where even people in the field don't necessarily know the man.

Are you ever going to bother to write up what you think the corrections to what Fry said are or not?

Re: not catching up

BBC Four alone is worth it for me. A high level of programmes actually worth watching. Can't see a chance of getting its sort of content in a commercial environment.

Now if only BBC One could stop trying to be ITV 1 which is terrible.

Re: grateful for small mercies

Oblig XKCD: http://what-if.xkcd.com/13/

Long story short - you'll need more than a bright spark for advertising on the moon. You'll need the kinda spark apocalypses are made of.

Re: I want dumb TVs

Yep Synergy is a good choice. Also I like a cheap wireless keyboard I picked up with integrated touchpad.

No way you could convince me a remote control is going to be better than that if I am trying to keyword search my media.

If your PC is running?

You only have one?

BURN THE WITCH!

Re: Ridiculous comparison is ridiculous

"But it's nice to see Oracle's highly-paid lawyers can do it in a court case too. Would 'Demonic Dalvik and the Virtual Machine' make a good book title?"

Sounds like a good name for a Thrash Metal/Electro Punk mash-up band.

Re: Maybe he read Richard Dawkin's "The God Delusion"

"There are a few countries that have been run by atheists, and it's no more beautiful story than compared with the fundamentalistic theist ruler-ships. I can name a few from both sides, can you?"

Please do. And then please go onto explain how it is in any way sensible to lump in all people who are essentially only bound together by one philosophical statement - which is in essence a rejection of another one - as being in any way comparable to those who identify themselves as ascribing to a complete set of philosophical statements.

Because if you want to argue Hitler was an athiest (when the story is far more complex than that) in the same way Richard Dawkins is an atheist and hence if Richard Dawkins was Pope there would be a Holocaust you are so missing the point your target might as well be in a parallel reality.

Otherwise please continue on how the assertion "dieties don't exist," has any inductive logical outcomes on matters of morality, economics or politics that would be germain to the direction a country would take under the leadership of someone who held that particular assertion to be true.

Re: I want to find it funnier than I do...

"This being of course because a frightening percentage of people now text / email / socially networkalise themselves in this manner anyway"

People have always used shortcuts and abbreviations. The problem is not in the jots or tittles or particular grammatical constructs or spellings - it is entirely possible to understand these conventions. The problem is that often these people are inarticulate anyway meaning trying to extract sense was always going to be an uphill battle. Unfortunately I don't think that is a problem that would go away simply by eliminating a particular coloquial phonetic construct de jour.

Re: Lolcatz more useful...

Translate in all known languages and dialects including Welsh.

Re: Maybe he read Richard Dawkin's "The God Delusion"

The same place he is insufferably arrogant.

I don't see it myself but I guess I must have some sort of visual deficiency that cannot be remedied without some sort of "vision".

Re: er? horse Racing on the BBC?

Family Guy is not on iPlayer presumably because Fox would not provide streaming rights.

Re: All programs?

There are plenty of pre-recorded items on News 24 such as Click and Reporters which could fall under that category. A number of times these pre-recorded items do get bumped though for "breaking news" so I for one would be happy if they were available online at the point when they were ready for broadcast rather than at the point at which they were scheduled for broadcast.

Re: BBC lefites

"The BBC may outsource production, but the producers will aim to please their socialist customer."

I would *love* to hear the Marxist doctrine behind The Tweenies.

Re: BBC lefites

Also you may like to know that "the BBC" doesn't produce all its programs in house. The Tweenies was produced by Tell-Tale Productions now owned by Entertainment Rights which five seconds of Googling/Binging/DuckDuckGoing could tell you.

So you'll have to take up with Iain Lauchlan and Will Brenton whether they had a secret agenda to push with a Jimmy Saville Tweenied puppet.

Re: BBC lefites

Spectacular non-sequitur - congratulations!

Re: What if?

"Banning things does not stop the root cause of these killings, someone has suffered a short circuit in their brain which has caused them to want to destroy....."

That violence is a necessary tool for survival which has tensions with civilised living does not make it a "short circuit". The actions of sociopaths cannot be easily reduced to a simple cause an effect though so rarely gets talked about because arguments trolling about what particular piece of media technology, low art, economics or weapons technology is to blame is much easier.

Re: If you've got a TV big enough for this to make any difference,

Indeed - who the hell in general has the space for a 60 inch screen?

Re: Brilliant

Indeed this is the point: it is not a "proof" that no concept one might label god can exist but the common idea that there's a infinitely loving god (i.e. the one Bible thumpers will bang on about) out there is weaker. It is simply the equivalent of saying, "you haven't even scratched the surface of the idea you think you know so much about to me."

Of course this is not exactly contraversial since theologians have been knocking that one back and forth since it began.

Re: The question on everyone's lips of course is....

I doubt your reasoning. We have perfectly cromulent hardware success stories coming from Cambridge including the ARM and we punch way above our weight in software terms. It's hard to argue the cheapness of the Spectrum isn't part of the reason why so many were able to get into software. It helped in my case. (Age 7).

Re: C++ put me off programming

I dunno... in some ways assembler can be easier than C++; well, at least it was back in the days of the Z80.

Re: Why?

Nothing about scoffing just pointing out the obvious: I cannot think of much that I've ever called my bank for that did not involve sensitive information.

What your saying reduces to:

"Twitter is high profile right now so if you hassle your bank on it you'll bypass the normal queues. This doesn't solve any real problems but at least for the moment you can pretend it does and also pretend that it's actually anything fundamentally to do with Twitter."

Re: Good job he wasn't a diplomat

Please, let's not have any nuance in discussions on human behaviour. Let's all just pretend it's nice and simple and we can get back to assuming that the cultural or personal explanation de jour really sums everything up about a war that lasted over five years across mutliple countries with its roots - like everything else - extending much further back.

Re: We have enough power

Whilst this is true the basic advantage of resource waste is that it has allowed cheaper development - i.e. the cost of development is much more than the cost of hardware therefore throwing hardware at the problem was the better choice. So we'd have less development and hence less software to run in general.

Although of course if one is working from the mindset that only the software of peak efficiency should be allowed to survive perhaps that's not a bad thing.

Re: re: How is "pay to win" any different to stuffing arcade machines full of coins?

I'm not seeing a particular distinction other than in the sophistication of the mechanism. Effectively it's the same thing: the chances of you being able to beat most arcade games on a single 1UP is basically nill. Your 1UPs are as extensive as your wallet. This really is just an extension of the arcade model - sure, in theory you could win without paying but in practice it isn't going to happen.

Re: Socialism!

Then we can kill off this nonsense by bumper stickers of the type:

"Social is just three letters from socialism!"

Re: I don't agree with Orlowski

But if the music industry doesn't have all the money then I won't get to hear the latest auto-tuned hip-hop/pop/rock/faux-punk abomination tied into the latest terrible animated movie!

Re: So

You know it is entirely possible to construct a model to test a hypothesis that fails right?

Probably not - those don't get reported. Doesn't invalidate the idea of using modelling though.

Re: "Boffins"? Seriously?

Ok, so you're not new here but apparently you are unable to pick up on the style of the articles on this site.

I don't really see what else can be done but patronise you my little cherub.