Oh, SPANNING

Thought you said 'globe spamming'

Flagellate the moribund equine one more time

I see one of the Oxford bullet points is:

"effective systems verification and assurance"

I imagine that this is some 'formal methods' stuff being taken for another canter round the block. Not, clearly, that it is completely worthless, but I do have a feeling the Oxford Comp Sci academics are quite good of relieving people of their money by putting a new spin on whatever they wanted to do anyway.

Pause briefly to mock their 'about us' page with its links that aren't https://www2.cybersecurity.ox.ac.uk/contact-us/

Gamification? Meh

We at Pengwyn Towers are working on the next stage beyond gamification of the workspace - pornifiction of the workplace.

Here's the API we will be using https://github.com/qdot/librealtouch/blob/master/python/realtouch.py (NSFW by implication) - the fact that it is in Python is somehow appropriate.

Noise

Unless someone funds some proper market research (and why would they) we will never really know what languages people really use. Assuming of course you can agree what counts as programming. Does using IF(logical_test,value_if_true,value_if_false) in Excel count?

Most of these measures are measures of people jumping up and down squeaking more than anything. Clearly if a, say, Fortran programmer buys one book every ten years, changes jobs every twenty and doesn't blog or post to forums they aren't going show up , whereas a 22 year old using Python on Pails and Javascript in Jails tweeting every commit to the tosspothub version control repository is.

Will no-one rid us of these jerks with spreadsheets?

Will no-one rid us of these jerks with spreadsheets?

Fear not

The West can compete on its management skills and strategic thinking.

Isn't the time honoured way of getting Windows to support a language to add it to KDE and then get lots of publicity, then Microsoft will follow?

If the actual work is being done by Indians in India anyway...

... then that must mean the only reason for hiring a UK (or more likely UK subsidiary of a US company) will be the superiority of the UK / US managers and their strategic vision etc...

HA HA HA HA HA [FX: Falls off perch laughing]

Voice

I am surprised that absence of voice is a problem. Most American daily papers are bland in the extreme, particularly ones outside major markets. And, believe it or not, (some) people buy USA Today, it's not just given away for free at chain motels.

Nostalgia

Back in the days when American TV shows got shown here ages after they were shown in the U.S. and back when there were things worth watching, I used to pay fo one of these premium news servers. The joy of downloading Buffy / X-Files episodes over NTL dial-up, then assembling the parts then unRARing them.

It is frightening how long ago it was that Buffy and the X-Files finished.

I think the last thing I downloaded was the first episode of Tru Calling. Whilst I commend the TV network for knowing their audience, in having a series that involved Eliza Dushku running between places without adequate support (*), it didn't quite seem worth the few dollars a month.

(*) I hope she got danger money.

The closest I ever got to throwing a computer out the window...

... was trying to get OS/2 onto one.

I actually quite liked OS/2 1.1. It was a shame that

a) it was almost impossible to get it to install on computers, even IBM PS/2s.

b) it had a habit of lovingly resuming things on reboot so accurately that once it had crashed, it would crash in the same way on restart etc.

The deliberate confusion with having the extended edition allegedly only work on PS/2s was a big mistake.

Mark my words

If they turn FM off there will be riots, burning cars etc. etc.

You've heard of patent trolls, this is a troll patent!

YHBT

As this is in the context of the Telegraph

Shouldn't you be referring to their readers on the Costa etc. as being 'economic migrants'?

As I say every year

Why might the steampunk croud prefer Countess Ada Lovelace over Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper? Hmm. Countess, Rear Admiral, Countess, Rear Admiral.

See also Babbage vs Hollerith - things that actually were made and commercially successful are much more glamorous than things that weren't - otherwise people would be dressing up as 1910s CTR salesmen - DarkSuitWhiteShirtPolishedShoesPunk doesn't have the same ring to it.

I call upon the readers' wisdom

If I have a GPS watch / phone will it

a) magically pick up Galileo as well as the U.S. satelites?

b) not

in which case how will I get it? Could a phone have a software upgrade or would it need a hardware one?

When both systems are in use will things come with an option to choose?

Hmm

Would non-members of the great-and-good, giving sureties for some random non-celeb get away with not paying the whole amounts like this lot have?

The assignment of integers to things

I offer my services to the Government (or whoever will pay) at a modest fee of 200k per annum as CEO of OFINT, the office of assignment of integers to things. Obviously I will be needing legal and administrative backup but

I present, by way of job application, some of what I think is my best work in assigning integers to things

dt_file_based = 2

ds_not_updatable_internal_version = 16

lang_traditional_chinese = 12

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

Time for a merger - Microogle or Googosoft?

Back of the queue

BT (or rather the subcontractors of the subcontractors of their subcontractors) put a giant green wardrobe in the middle of a narrow path blocking it from people wheeling push-chairs / wheelchairs etc. and blocking the view towards the main road from the shared drive of a few houses. After some complaining (by me and the people whose view was blocked) it was removed. Clearly we are now at the bottom of the list as one has yet to reappear in the more sensible location by the strange Post Office green box into which things for postmen to deliver are put.

I cannot say that I care personally, I don't quite see the need for something faster than my 4 MB/s link, but maybe some people have unusually refined / high bandwidth porn needs.

I was actually moderately taken with the Lumia (not one of the two new ones, obviously) I tried in some phone shop whilst my girlfriend was buying an Android phone, but the browser didn't reflow text or to put it another way 'was about as much use as a chocolate teapot'. [There may have been some way but some searching on forums gave me the impression you couldn't].

So...

The product manager is called Todd Brix...

... and anyone who buys one will be on their tod with one of these bricks.

Suckers!!!

The software development community... the only industry where lots of people feel they shouldn't be unionised, that it shouldn't get the tax breaks every other industry lobbies for, where innovation shouldn't be protected, and where there is a dominant ideology that the product should be given away for its marginal cost of production (*)

(*) yes, I am aware that there is some sophistry by which it is claimed that the GPL doesn't mean that things have to be free as in given away, not convinced this stacks up in reality.

Is YouView inherently Freeview only then, not Freesat?

Certainly the only box was when I looked, but then there is very litle info on FreeSat on their website, I wondered whether it was dying a death.

Catapults

I am sure I felt a blood pressure spike when I first read

http://www.innovateuk.org/deliveringinnovation/catapults.ashx

I mean transport systems WHAT THE F***ING F***ING F***??????

Well

One of the Oxford ones seems to have a link to a cybersquatted domain, and the other one, demonstrating its commitment to local media, has a website designed and administered from New Zealand.

BS

I am amused to see that the corridor between Cambridge and Old Street (source: Google Maps) passes through Bishops Stortford. There is BS between Cambridge and Silicon Roundabout. Who would have thought it?

Ms Stob covered this (in the days of Dr. Dobbs)

http://www.drdobbs.com/waltz/184411096

"It matters not a bit that you scream and you holler

For what kind of jerk ends a string with a dollar?"

Also their search engine is not what it was

On Thursday evening I took the dogs for a walk up Wittenham Clumps. When I got there (about 9 p.m). the car-park seemed suspiciously full of cars with people in. Given the nature of the clumps (the name being a clue) I came to the obvious conclusion and, on my Android phone, googled 'dogging Wittenham' (quotes in this message, not in the search). Clearly the words dogging and wittenham are SEO'd up to the hilt because none of the first 3 pages of hits looked (from the excerpts of text shown) as though they would have anything useful - clearly just designed to get hits - I imagine much the same pages would appear for dogging Abingdon, dogging Wallingford, dogging Didcot etc.

So, none the wiser, the dogs and I went for our walk.

As it happens, for those wondering, I kind of suspect it isn't, as when I got back at 22:15 there was only one white van left in the car-park (not obviously rocking or steamed up), but this is one of the many occasions I have found recently where Google has been so gamed as to be useless.

It's too late for me but you can still save yourselves

It has struck me for a long time (particularly in the light of the handling of the Foot & Mouth epidemic) that if there is some sort of pandemic / similar crisis we can rely on this country to handle it very badly, probably signifiantly worse than elsewhere. This is what I refer to as 'lessons have been learnt' syndrome - things are f****d up due to the ignorant and incapable outsourcing to the ignorant and incapable who outsource to the ignorant and incapable. The 'oh it was our subcontractors that screwed up' is a feature not a bug. Then it goes wrong, people wring their hands, say 'lessons have been learnt', the dogs bark and the caravan moves on.

Well now

There have been so many times I have seen people go along with the Creative Commons stuff until they find some nasty evil company wants to use the picture. I imagine the same gang will be up in arms when they see how this really pans out (though presumably in reality this ends up at the ECJ, anyway).

Not Corby

Thought it was the Android trouser press. 'Where do you want the crease to go today?'

So Andrew...

... what would you like British TV companies (or not to use any dogmatic and backwards facing terms like that, 'the people in Britain wot generate visual entertainment in a manner vaguely reminsicent of television programmes, or film, or theatre or something') to be producing and how would you like it to be funded. Or is this a market we should be surrendering to the U.S. with its greater consumer base?

The meejah

I thought that the alleged creative industries are actually pretty small, they are only perceived as being important because they, er, big themselves up (as the yoof say, I believe) relentlessly.

The same goes for football clubs, it is not big business, it is medium business at best.

Or am I out of date (genuine question - I don't work somewhere with big books of SIC codes and this sort of data any more).

Are we a net exporter of TV these days, anyway?

Makes sense

Given the terrible problems Apple are having due to having hardware and sofware biz, and the success Microsoft and Nokia are having with the hardware and software being in different hands.

There was something like this in the very early days of the web that Dave Winer got immensely annoyed by, what was it called?

SVB = Steve 'Venture's my middle name, no really' Bong

Must be more than a coincidence. Is Mr Bong's middle name Venture, would make his startup incubator's name Bong Ventures particularly appropriate?

Too big to fail, too ludicrous to succeed

Well, they have all this money, what else are they going to do?

If I were them I would be using the money to buy something 'real' in AOL fashion. Some way of advertising that actually works. Maybe a TV network or 2? Would Rupert sell Fox? Could be branded FaceBox? (or a tie in like MSNBC).

Not unprecedented

If I recall correctly, the current (VS2010) and previous (VS2008) Express editions don't let you develop MFC applications, you have to use WinForms with C++/CLR if you want to use C++ with them (probably raw Win32 API is OK, can't remember).

i.e. the Express version is targetted towards whatever Microsoft ispushing at the time.