Posts by Darran Clements

Great list - have to agree about Silent Running and Twelve Monkeys though ... certainly worthy of making this list.

Web infrastructure OS

The web isn't an OS. The beauty of the web is that it is well documented, standardised medium for developers to write code to exploit. That's the beauty. Sort of middleware of a kind.

App culture is breaking out of this by using the network and subverting the web. I am very, very concerned that Microsoft are seemingly going down the Apple route on this. The sooner apps are consigned to the dustbin of history and we get back to having our nice clean, egalitarian web the better.

In the meantime, computing devices need to run OSes to provide the background for running the applications to connect to the web don't they? In which case you can stay on win 7 and 7- (I'm on XP, Vista and 7 btw), or you can "upgrade" at great cost in all ways to MacOS, or at great shoe-horning effort to a Linux distro or just bite the bullet and go for 8. That would seem, objectively, to be a bit of a no-brainer, should you need a new PC at least.

Flash - yes

Office - yes

strange little business application - oh yes indeed sir...

Add to that, the fact that there is going to be harmonisation of look and feel, and eventually, when mobile computing is up to it, actual convergence of the OSes Microsoft produce if BG is to be believed, should leave pretty much everything else in their own stagnant little ponds (from a business perspective at least)

Oh come on!

Will you please stop using the word boffin please? It sounds anti-intellectual and childish.

Elop's comment was that "You don't need one", not that you can't make use of multicore processors. He was alluding to the fact (well his opinion) that Android requires more processor "grunt" to operate smoothly than iOS and particularly Windows Phone. I don't know how you can fault that argument really. If the OS performance overhead is lower, surely that is a good thing? It leaves more headroom for the device to perform elective tasks.

Creationism in science classes

I noted some cynicism in this report. Good! How many of the teachers identified themselves as science teachers? Why waste time talking about superstitions in a class on biology? Would it then be OK to discuss French grammar in English or vice versa? I think the answer to that is probably no.

I have no problem with debating religion/science/philospohy/ethics with anyone, especially as zealots of all flavours end up car crashing their rather feeble arguments in relatively few steps, but this onward march of "teachers" who aren't qualified to comment on what is or isn't on the science curriculum, piping up and adding their unwanted voices to this debate is a complete joke.