Relevant programming languages are needed...

Although unfortunately the ones that are often used IRL are often the worst to learn fundamentals on. I did Computer Science at Uni and we learnt Ada as the main language - realising then that were very few Ada jobs on the market we asked our professor why we were learning it - his answer - "Because it will force you to code correctly" - He was right.

Ada is a ridiculously strict language - it wasn't fun to code in but as a teaching language it gave us a decent grounding in programming (and distributed and realtime systems) - However from a purely Job oriented point of view - it was somewhat harder to come out of Uni and get a job, all of my friends that are programming now are doing so in Languages they have basically had to teach themselves, we did touch on Java at school but not in any capacity where we would have been useful in the real world - even at Junior level - there was no talk of C++.

I think Python would be a decent language to teach at Uni nowadays (as an interpreted language) and has a lot of scope in the real world and something like C++ for a compiled language.

Keep current or become unemployable

I have always believed that if you are in the business of coding that you should be constantly updating your skill set or soon enough you will become obsolete, Younger coders are coming into the market at a time where there is alot of buzz around new technologies and frameworks to enable faster coding, they throw a few of these buzz words around in interviews and get a job, The problem is that most of them dont have solid fundamentals or experience to handle these technologies / frameworks competently or the ability to see the "bigger picture" and more often than I would have like to have seen - things come crashing down around them.

Brontosaurii?

Surely?

Not happy about this

I don't really watch sports, so have no need to purchase Sky Sports at Exhorbitant prices.

BBC coverage was awesome, the pre race build up was in my opinion one of the main reasons so many people got hooked into the past few years - highest viewing figures in 10 years - for it now to move to a paid service?

Urgh

I just vomited in my mouth a little

Good! £200 is way too expensive for the 1TB box

Virgin just seem to be taking the p*ss more and more with various things lately - the price for the 1TB TiVo box is just stupid - why not invest some more money in some of Sky's offerings / technology that people want? (Remote recording / remote viewing for instance) - for a supposedly superior network they are p*ss poor at utilising it.

I would be tempted with this cheaper version 500GB is plenty for what I need - but mainly because my V+ box is so sh*t at doing anything faster than 1mph and loves resetting mid recording.

Not to mention even thinking about using your box after midnight as it is completely unusable.

Surely.....

....this is botchable? Get some Birmingham Contractors in - We'd botch the hell out of it!

What was the App?

Just wondering what this fabled app is?

Atrocious interface - Trying too hard = fail!

I cant stand the new hotmail interface, I don't use it reguarly - it is just an old email account before I (wisely) made the switch to Gmail - its clunky and ugly - do they not understand people want simple clean interfaces?

SCADA on Windows?

Why would any company trust their critical real time systems to a throw a six to start OS?

So much Fragmentation already

Froyo update for the Motorola Droid / Milestone pushed back and back and back - such a pain! Android 2.1 is just broken, VPN doesn't work and no wifi tethering without rooting it.

IE6 Wont ever fully disappear!

On 2 of my previous computers IE7 wouldn't install and upgrade IE6, The company I work for I have had similar problems on at least 6 or 7 computers, I'm pretty sure that this isn't an isolated case!

Also Think of things like Citrix and other crappy thin client systems - they all run IE6 - the BBC still uses IE6 as its main internal browser (or at least for the radio side of things).

Basically unless users choose to download a better browser such as firefox / Chrome then that % is never going to drop down enough for us Web Devs to not have to think about coding for it anymore.

The sooner IE6 is dead and buried the better!

Miserable Git

Really good for community spirit if your local officers are out having a laugh - more nanny state stupidness.

2011?

Bit optimistic aren't they? They wont be here in 2010 so just another thing good ol' Mr Cameron can decry and gain a few more votes :)

@No need to aplogise James

You really are a tool of the highest order - how are any of those things you have cited anything to do with the upkeep of roads? Stop embarrassing yourself and go lick a window or something

Top Gear James?

Clarkson needs to get him on! Seems like they have a lot in common!

OpenDNS FTW

I know its been mentioned already but just adding my vote in :)

This needs to stay alive

The webhosting community NEEDS CentOS. WHM/Cpanel requires it to run and all clean builds of it include CentOS as the core underlying OS unless you are intending to go the Red Hat / FreeBSD route - neither of which we would.

We have a VPS Cloud running Centos with Whm/cpanel on it and wouldnt want to change that setup. WHM takes the hassle out of setting up a web server and provides great functionality not only to me as a sys admin but also to my clients.

I think whatever happens the project will be ok as so many people rely on it

Am I the only person...

Who thinks its ironic that the ballot is displayed in IE?

Also - surely there is a bit of a chicken and egg thing going to happen - if its going to be presented in that way surely a browser will have to be bundled to display it?

Ridiculous!

My Maestro card has served me well over the years, the 3D Secure thing works fine, unlike the verified by visa shite that never seems to remember the correct password after you reset it. Each time I order with my VISA card I have to reset my VbV password as it doesnt remember the last one I entered.

Something is obviously going on here - it means either way that google checkout wont be getting my business and businesses will be losing money because of it!

Stop whining about HTML email

Who ever said that it is the professional designers who are being hit by this hit the nail on the head. My clients task me (and pay me) to create HTML emails for them - often from pre-existing designs. Therefore why should I suffer just because one particular client (which like it or not has a monopoly) refuses to follow specific standards (or at least try).

It took me an extra 2 hours tinkering with code to get it displaying correctly in outlook 2007 - why should I have to endure that?

Absolutely Ridiculous.

Who the *%^&$ is he to say that there is no specifically designated Subset" of HTML widely in use that has been adopted by people. How about just HTML? Surely Microsoft cannot say they support "HTML Emails" if they dont actually follow the HTML standard? Every other client at least manages to half way support HTML to a point where we can code something that looks good in a non retarded way. But No - because of Outlook all email developers have to create some "Fisher Price my First HTML" code to fit in with the MS word "Fisher Price my First Rendering Engine".

I am pissed off with this as I have just spent the last 2 hours trying to get my email to display correctly in Outlook 2007 - even after following the retarded 1995 method of coding HTML (tables - inline styles - no background images) it still doesnt look ideal. So even with my hands tied behind my back - Microsoft still takes pleasure in repeatedly kicking me in the balls and silently mocking me with broken layouts (and broken tables - HOW????).

Fine - so use word to compose the message but at least use Internet Explorer to Render incoming emails - thats is at least (a bit) less broken than your shitty email client.

I hope someone renders the face of the guy who decided that word rendering was a good idea.

@Joe Montana

Joe.

Backups were taken - both on VAServ and as personal scheduled downloads to another VPS. I also have backups of each site on a local machine. The main problem is that we dont actually have a server to put all of this on at the moment. Of the 5 servers I have with VAServ (and have had happily for over 3 years now - with no previous problems and excellent support). 3 have lost all data and are currently still offline - including the backups with VAServ. Which leaves me with local backups (totalling about 25GB) which I now need to commision / build a server (VPS.NET) and upload these backups aswell as waiting for DNS propagation for the new server.

It is not a case of data lost but rather service delayed as we strive to get these sites back on line.

The encryption was DES encryption with the users password as the key - entered when they login not stored anywhere other than in a salted MD5 hash in the user table. The only sensitive information was name and address.

Its a lot more than most people do and seeing as this was only an SQL injection of rm -rf there is no risk of any data leak full stop - I am secure in the knowledge that my users data would be protected even if they did get hold it - plus going to the effort of cracking a salted MD5 for a relatively small number of names and addreses would seem a bit pointless.

So - Joe, please explain what else you would expect me to do other than the steps I have already taken on this one?

So Pissed off

We did have backups of the majority of the sites - but so many have been lost / backups were out of date. VAServ should be ashamed that this happened. I was one week away from moving everything to VPS.net aswell.

This company seriously impresses me!

At the moment they cant seem to do any wrong, they have introduced VPS.NET a cloud computing service, Ditlev isnt afraid to get stuck in with his client base and talk to the average joe's and now supporting the UK economy / saving themselves from Irate customers having to deal with retards overseas.

Overall I think they have completely the correct ethos as a company, I would love to hear some employee reviews of working there as I would seriously consider applying to work there! (And no - i dont work there - this is a genuine congratulation!)

Congratulations Ditlev and all at UK2!!

All this cap talk

Virgin can go around on TV and put up HUGE billboards saying "We have no download caps" - "We do not cap your broadband connection" and probably even other semantically correct bullshit - because technically they dont cap your broadband - they just break its legs when you download a bit too much!.

I agree with all of the above though - concentrate on increasing your current network capacity for people who have actually paid for their services that they arent currently getting!

Outlook

As long as they remove stupid MS Word rendering engine from Outlook then ill be happy.

Lovely Idea - I hope it works!

But how long till ISP's start bitching and moaning about bandwidth use on this? They already shit themselves when the iPlayer started to become popular spouting stuff about providers paying more etc - this is bound to get them irritated.

Then with Virgin's Contention Rate, DPI/shaping and throttling I can see the problem being more about the ISP than the service long run.

It does sound like a great idea tho - id certainly sign up if the price was right!

Problem is with lack of upgrade for IE6

I simply cannot upgrade IE6 on my PC - I have tried - using Windows update, downloading IE7, physically trying to remove it and nothing works! This is why there are still a high percentage of users. Microsoft should release something that forces an upgrade to at least IE7 then poor developers like me wouldnt have to worry about it so much.

@Oliver Mayes

Assuming he managed to hop into the van and apply the handbrake without getting smashed up in the process - Im pretty sure he wouldn't have bothered asking for compensation.

However when faced with one of the many retarded people Royal Mail employs and in addition to his own injuries when trying to fix someone elses mistakes I think anyone would have asked for compensation - I certainly would have!

There is a difference between a good deed (generally not involving you being battered and bruised from it) and one done out of necessity due to retarded employees.

I say fair play to the guy - I hope he gets a decent payout!

@Steve - I agree - I also wouldn't put it past this countries PC culture to do it!

@Lol Whibley - Its in bootnotes for a reason - stop whining!

@Tony

Thankyou - I didn't see that - some further in depth battery tests would be welcome though, My Nokia n95 gives me 2 days if I dont touch it, it gives me less than half a day if the radio is on (whether actually playing or not), about 5 hours of constant music playback, about 3 hours solid internet browsing (3G) and much less with WiFi.

Nokia seem to completely overlook battery life.

Battery Life?

Come on Reg - You should know Battery Life is a pretty important review piece on Nokia Phones - considering unless I charge my N95 at least twice a day it will no doubt run out of battery through normal usage!

Impressive

Am I the only one who is impressed with the speed he executed this revenge?

For Christs Sake - Just FORCE an IE6 UPDATE!!!!

I dont understand it? When MSN is out of date I am told that I cannot sign in until I upgrade to the newest version, Why cant IE6 do the same?

I have just spent another week working on a website that doesnt currently look right in IE6 (although it looks fine in IE7, IE8, Firefox, Opera and Safari), I am sick of wasting so much time correcting things that shouldnt need to be corrected, IE6 is single handedly costing me money. The fact that I even have to keep that Shitty Monstrosity on my computer to test sites that for some reason STILL have people using IE6 visiting it is beyond me.

I hate IE6, Microsoft need to just force an update through before websites start killing IE6 access themselves.

AVG?

Just change to Avast and be done with it!

Price Hikes Ho

I agree, I am going to kick off big time about the whole of virgin media services - I certainly dont see why I should pay more because of the new channels. When the channels were removed the prices weren't reduced. When my broadband connection gets limited after downloading 1GB of LEGAL stuff I didnt get a price reduction.

Secondly - following a broadband outage a week or so ago which as far as I am aware was only regional - how is it that I suddenly got 3MB/s download only to see this drop to 800kb/s as all of the other cable modems popped back into action around the region.

Virgin has oversubscribed its network, it regularly and consistenly shits on its customers and then has the cheek to ask for more money for doing so.

Well the moment they put the price increase into force (which they will) I will be making sure that they dont get it easily from me - I have plenty of ways of costing them more than their price rise will be - they should take heed from their customers and just quit taking the piss.

K eh?

Kunting Kanionical?

Hmmm wouldnt be a good marketing campaign really would it?

BOOM!! HEADSHOT!

This article is clearly incorrect, everyone wants to be like FPS Doug - FACT!

Unlimited?

Not sure which provider it is thats advertising it but there is one that offers unlimited internet (Fair use of 500MB), I have an unlimited tarrif on t-mobile that has a fair usage policy of around 1GB (Plenty for what I need), however my last months usage (mainly of YouTube) was up to 600MB, and that was just using it in the mornings on the way to work.

Unlimited should mean unlimited - not limited (as surely the name implies?).