Great Article as usual.

I will print it out and frame it to present to my 8 year old son in about 8 or 9 years, by which time it will probably seem rather quaint (or perhaps sagacious, who knows?)... assuming I can convince him to fiddle around with the Raspberry Pi and Python without completely scaring him away from Comp Sci for life. (I've for a second son who's 5 as a backup option, who is scarily bright so I have more hope for that one to be honest!)

Sorry kids if you are reading this in 2024 after googling (do they still exist in 2024?) for daddy's old posts. Take it with a pinch of salt.

A good buying opportunity?

The price is right, and this company has plenty of smarts.

Alcohol withdrawal?

Imagine you have a stinking headache.

Same with caffeine if you normally drink lots of coffee.

Does ibuprofen / paracetamol count as part of your £1? Suppose it's not food, so might be OK. ;-)

The wisdom of the crowd!

Something about least common denominator methinks.

Careful here

I think "Plumpy" might at worst be in line for receiving stolen goods, but what you are doing could be viewed as a lot worse. Think about it.

This is not "biting the hand"

A very unbalanced article.

BT Research labs *was* one of the world's most pioneering centres of technology and telecommunications.

Not any more and not for over 10-15 years now. I worked there in the early naughties, and since then even more Mahindra staff have been bought in to develop software. I now work at the Cambridge Science Park, where real pioneering work is happening (not by me, I'm just a humble sysadmin)

Low traffic != Low usage

Surely an RSS aggregator is going to have lower traffic patterns than other sites which are graphics / advertising / video heavy? Doesn't necessarily mean we spend less time using that facility, and therefore you can't surmise that it's "less popular".

Oh FFS.

Just read about this... on Google Reader (on my Android phone)

What are the alternatives please people? Multi devices and keep everything in synch.

Where do I get one?

No, I'm being serious. Not the one in the video, that's probably beyond my budget. I just happened to be shopping for one of these and came across this story, and figured that The Reg comment section is one of the better places to ask for advice. Can someone please post some UK links? Thanks.

Rule #1 : Read the man pages

Rule #2 : Read the man pages.

This is SO key, but many newbies miss this. You should have man pages installed by default and this is your best resource.

man <command>

e.g. man lvm

man -k lvm does a keyword search and gives you a list of pages relating to LVM.

once inside the man page, use slash (/) to search for FILES or SEE ALSO (literally type /SEE ALSO) and it will hop you down to some useful bits.

If a man page is in a certain section, then you need to specify that.

man 1p zcat gives you the zcat command from section 1p.

HTH.

He's kind of right.

Go out to the local park on a sunny day, and you'll find fewer kids playing. Go out wandering into the woods and it's mostly middle aged / fogies. Record shops are dead or dying. Seriously, get over it. This is not the way media is going to be delivered. Having said that, our local high street seems to be as busy as ever although it's all clothes shops and coffee shops.

I guess the obesity and mental health "epidemic" that might be quietly creeping up on us could be blamed on xbox and watching footy instead of going out and actually playing.

Having said all that, I don't want to go back to the "good old days" when if I wanted to buy a new TV I would have to go out to a shop and get a demo from a sales droid, only to find when I get it home that it sounds rubbish and I paid far too much. I can now get the benefit of 100s of reviews and comparisons.

Not so sure about the weather though, they don't seem to be able to predict what will happen this afternoon with any degree of accuracy so I might as well just look out of the window.

Geeks like us DO need to get out more and meet real people. Get some sunshine. Get on your bike. Go running. Stop staring at screens all day + all evening. Otherwise you'll end up fat, sad, lonely and unwell and being propped up by drugs. I've seen this happen to lots of people and it's a gradual and subtle decline into depression.

618 billion daily users?

That's impressive.

I just don't get it.

I mean, what is any of this supposed to be about? Who am I, and what am I doing here? How do I get back the 2 minutes of my life plus the 1 minute it took to type this?

SMS code = good. Google Authenticator app = better.

If you use Google apps then you really should put the Google Authenticator app onto your smart phone, and then you'll still be able to 2-step authenticate when you don't have mobile signal. Does everyone here know about this already? I've been using this for over a year now, and while still not perfect I feel much safer than the rest of the crowd.

Why do you want to get into IT?

If it's for the money, then you might be wasting your time. If it's because you love tinkering with computers, you *might* get lucky and the money will follow later on.

Get yourself a linux box and use it to learn scripting, admin and programming (Python, Ruby).

Go onto the Khan Academy and Code Academy sites and run through some of the tutorials.

If you are serious about networking, sign up with the Open University and learn all the skills you would need for a CCNA. This will cost you, but you'll get a lot of hand holding / tutorials and at the end of it you should be ready to take the CCNA exam.

Get a Raspberry Pi, and get it to do something interesting.

Pick an area that interests you personally. Is it's media players, then install XMBC and Navi-X. If it's programming then learn a bit of Perl and install ImageMagic module and get it to, I dunno, make thumbnails out of hundreds of your photos. Hang around on internet forums and ask loads of questions (after you've searched carefully for the answer already of course!)

You'll get none of this from studying for a qualification, and most companies are looking for experience and a can-do attitude.

About your idea of starting with a help desk, I think that's risky as most help desks these days seem to be just about logging calls with very little chance of career progression.

Good luck! I've been doing IT for 20+ years and I still love it. :-) (actually 30 if you count BASIC programming on the Vic 20)

Where's the down side?

People with too much money will have to pay for premium mobile monthly contracts to help top up the flagging economy. Sweet. Thumbs down anyone (yes, you are the "people with too much money") . :-P

cynical?

... but this has got The Reg and other news outlets talking about the film a few weeks before the release. Could the film producers have deliberately provoked this action, to drum up the publicity?

Still, I can't wait to see it. :-) Can't imagine how they will stretch such a short story to 3 films?

doesn't make sense to download pirate material at home when you can do it with impunity elsewhere

Doesn't make sense?

So, if I want to pirate a film or an album then I'm going to have to take a trip all the way down to the local library?? C'mon? Seriously? It's about convenience.

I DO actually take my kids to the library every week, but I would not want to sit there for several hours while a film downloads.

For that amount of inconvenience, I might actually be prepared to pay to stream the film.

;-)

So, that's it from Psion then?

Looks like it's really the end of an era, in that sense. Sniff.

You can see why Nokia execs would not be interested in Open Sourcing it, because they would see it as giving something to help the competition... but if "the community" did manage to pick it up and run with it, they would still be able to benefit from that down the line. And if (when?) things don't work out so well with that Microsoft partnership, there could be a safety net.

But how would you be able to explain that to Nokia execs? These are the people that have gotten the company into such a mess (and I do mean "gotten" for a reason, as it's mostly the arrogant shouty American side of the company who have made most of the stupid decisions.)

Sigh.

JEAP?

a

Is this the ultimate bacon sarnie?

Or have they got it the wrong way round?

Assuming he just tripped and broke his ankle and then was eaten alive... What a way to go. Sheesh. (and why wouldn't you assume that?)

Is this for real?

Frickin' awesome!

'nuff said.

stream Spotify over Three's 3G network while I'm driving along the motorways

Yeah, it's pretty good on *most* of the motorways, although there are still quite a few where you can only get GPRS or nothing at all.

But on the TRAINS or out in the COUNTRYSIDE, forget it!! Especially inside a building if you live in the country, like I do (yes a building, and in the country) forget about getting any signal at all, unless you have a bandwidth hogging femtocell.

I guess there's much more money to be made in cities and on the motorways, but I really wish they would sort out filling in the coverage.

Microsoft where going to fix spam.

So, how's that coming along?

won't record them automatically as that would risk infringing on TiVo's patent??

Really!? Seriously!?

So TiVo "invented" that idea did they? FFS.

I used to like TiVo, but this is beyond ridiculous. Fucking patents.

Better Polish food.

Sałatka (seriously, look this up - it's awesome)

Bigos (of course - cooked for the 3rd day is best)

Gołąbki (no actual pigeons harmed in the making - just meat wrapped with cabbage - but delicious)

... or just stick some sliced kołbasa on the BBQ. (careful, it falls through the grill.)

Just saying' :-)

Yum.

Foundering?

I think it's a bit early to declare FB as foundering!?

Let's wait and see, but I'd just like to go on the record as calling this one the other way. I still think there's a lot of value in that company and I can't see anything coming along to eat their breakfast just yet.

Even though almost everyone hates FB after a while of using it, they all seem to stick with it (or leave and then come back).

I've got a three letter twitter account - @sbu

... but I've had 2-step auth switched on for ages, so I'll be OK - right?

This is a joke, right?

Either it's a joke or you've completely missed the point of an infographic.

It doesn't make any sense, or help me to visualise your stats or whatever.

Am I being really stupid here and having the equivalent of watching Spinal Tap and making the point that they didn't seem to be a very good band?

WARNING NEEDED

Offshoring massive parts of your IT Department could lead to serious fuckups. Are you sure you want to continue (yes / no) ?

What about a connector for the INSIDE of the car?

Instead of having to hook up my tomtom / phone / etc to a bloody cigar lighter socket FFS.

Polarised your audience.

It seems people either love or hate Dominic. With the vast majority hating. I think he's got a healthy amount of cynicism and I find myself agreeing with most of the content of his articles, and it's even prompted my to make a few changes to my CV (mostly removing old irrelevant stuff) and prepare better for interviews.

He's not quite as cynical as myself, but then that's probably an unhealthy level of cynicism.

I think many of the techies I've worked with over the years could really learn a lot... they could, but inevitably they won't. It's really about marketing yourself as a commodity, to get the best profit. And it's about picking up new skills a couple of years before they are in heavy demand (like Puppet, AWS, MapReduce, ...)

G'wan, thumbs down my comment. I dare ya.