back to article Brexit at the next junction: Verity's guide to key post-vote skills

Pay attention, campers. I have conducted an impartial analysis of the post-Brexit landscape and identified a list of concrete, must-have programming skills for your edification. Impartial? That's pretty rich, coming from you, Verity, considering what I have heard about your activities since Referendum Night. I don't know what …

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  1. Pete 2 Silver badge

    While we're at it

    We might as well go the whole IT-protectionist route and reinstate the (british) EDSAC "standard" 18-bit word length for computers and, of course, the JANET style naming convention for domains - also known as back to front or uk.co.theregister.

    At least that would slow the spammers down a little.

    1. hammarbtyp

      Re: While we're at it

      Wow, the 1st computers I either worked on (GEC.Elliot) were 18 bit and those 2 extra bits had confused me for years.

      Mystery solved...thanks for that

  2. Rich 11

    Guineas

    We can no longer tolerate the disadvantages of a currency unit that is not readily divisible by seven.

    The point of the guinea was that it was divisible by 3, and didn't actually exist as a coin in the Middle Ages (in later centuries the number of shillings assigned to a guinea varied according to the fluctuation in the values of gold and silver). The standard currency unit we should be returning to is the mark, worth 14 silver shillings. After all, when we return to the glorious past beloved of Brexiteers, without marks how else are we to pay a king's ransom?

    1. Simon Harris

      Re: Guineas

      Would a £1.05 coin be known as a New Guinea?

    2. calmeilles

      Re: Guineas

      The mark was 13 shillings and 4 pence. Being 160 pence or ⅔ of a pound.

      Mine's the one with the duodecimal abacus....

    3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Guineas

      "the mark, worth 14 silver shillings"

      No, 13s 4d or xiijs iiijd if you prefer (not only do old documents use lower case Latin numerals but what would be the last of more than i i is always written j and iiij seems preferred to ix).

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Guineas

        "iiij seems preferred to ix"

        Dammit - iv

        1. Citizen99
          Linux

          Re: Guineas

          Many antique clocks have IIII instead of IV.

          But also IX instead of VIIII. To fit nicely on the dial, don't y'know.

    4. Martin

      Re: Guineas

      I thought the point of the guinea is that you paid for the services of your lawyer/accountant/whatever in guineas - he kept the pounds and paid the shillings to his clerk.

  3. Anonymous Blowhard

    Ungodly new-fangled units!

    Why go back to Imperial Units when we could revert all the way back to biblical times? Although this article is incomplete and doesn't give the Talmudic units for magnetic field strength...

  4. Joe Werner Silver badge

    O'RLY?

    In the linked article it is written that the USA use the same system... except for the 1pint=16oz and the US gallon (ounce, quart,...) actually being quite smaller than the proper imperial one (right? too lazy to check w'pedia)...

    To be honest, I like my beer in the correct size (though the way it is done in Cologne also has its advantages, get a fresh one without asking all the time - but they are only 0.2l)

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Can I just point out that one million millions is the current French value of a billion?

    1. Squander Two
      Devil

      Can I just point out that "Napoleon won" is the current French value of Waterloo?

  6. JulieM Silver badge

    Dissenting voice

    I reckon we're actually more likely to finish the job of adopting SI, once we haven't got anybody breathing down our necks trying to make us.

    Almost nobody under 50 years old understands mediaeval measurements properly anyway.

    1. calmeilles

      Re: Dissenting voice

      I'm 53 and was taught both Imperial and metric at primary school. My sister is only four years younger but by the time she went there it was metric only so you're probably spot on with the 50 years demarcation.

  7. Mike 16

    Well, I'm prepared

    The IBM 1401 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View has the "Stirling Currency" option. Well _one_ of them does. The one from Germany.

    Of course, one can implement addition and subtraction of mixed radix numbers on "more normal" machines using essentially the same technique as for BCD arithmetic on binary machines. Mul/Div of mixed radix is left as an exercise to the insane.

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: Mul/Div of mixed radix is left as an exercise to the insane

      That might actually explain a lot about the current situation.

    2. Warm Braw

      Re: Well, I'm prepared

      The ICT 1301 had no binary arithmetic at all - it could do decimal or LSD. British computers for British values!

      And PL/I (which was developed in Hursley) had "sterling fixed point constants" - you could write 1.4.6L which would be converted to the number of pennies in one pound four shillings and sixpence.

  8. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Let's just settle for binary, or at least hexadecimal. Ooh look, 16 oz in a lb.

  9. Herby

    In settling for binary...

    Why didn't they make the silly inch 2.56 cm in stead of 2.54 cm which it is now.

    Note: This is the value of the "Canadian Inch" at the beginning of WW2, I believe that the US inch was smaller, and the UK inch was bigger. Oh, and the inch and imperial units WON that war.

    1. John Styles

      Re: In settling for binary...

      There is of course still in real use, the U.S. Survey Foot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_(unit)#US_survey_foot

  10. veti Silver badge

    What's wrong with the Oxford comma?

    It avoids ambiguity, and more importantly it's named after a British city. (Oh, I understand there's some kind of school there too, but who cares.)

    I'm sure my parents, Boris Johnson and the Queen would agree.

    1. Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

      Re: What's wrong with the Oxford comma?

      I'm sure my parents, Boris Johnson and the Queen, would agree.

      TFTFY. :-P

    2. Trixr

      Re: What's wrong with the Oxford comma?

      Ah, but adding the Oxford comma in your example would have confused the issue if you hadn't used the word "parents".

      "I'm sure my father, Boris Johnson, and the Queen would agree."

      So your dad is Boris, eh?

    3. Squander Two
      Devil

      Re: What's wrong with the Oxford comma?

      Highlights of his global tour include encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod and a dildo collector.

      -- from a Times story about a documentary by Peter Ustinov.

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