Posts by Jim 59

Good story

I will be down voted aplenty for observing that there is gathering evidence that years of weed smoking can result in mental impairment & brain damage. Sorry about that!

Hopefully the chap can rebuild his shed anon.

Another Economist

Can't see anything too wrong with this, but it would be nice to see an engineer or two in the government. Still, at least our beans will be well counted, even if we manufacture nothing

In summary

Don't work anywhere less than 1 year

When you leave be very nice about it

Get the new contract and start date agreed in writing before resigning

Study: US iPhone owners tend to be rich, educated, white

Er, US citizenry as a whole is rich, educated, white.

But they have taken that into consideration, of course.

Don't say password, say passphrase

A phrase is much harder to crack, and much easier to remember. Regarding password storage, I would never, ever put my password database on the cloud or give it to anyone else. Lastpass ? No thanks.

Article reasonably well written but seems poorly researched, exhibiting almost troll-like qualities on occasion.

"desktop computers are going to merge into tablet-style touch-driven devices and disappear."

- No. Tablet / touch is a new market distinct from the the mature desktop market. Both will continue for the foreseeable future. Unless you want to use a tablet to write Reg articles ?

"[GNOME] takes the Linux and open-source community down a path of fragmentation they seem only too willing to venture down"

- Having more than one product to do the same job is known (outside the Windows world) as "choice". Some people like it.

"[Linux] infringing a worryingly precise 235 patents"

- of which Microsoft declined to name a single one. All American tech companies have hundreds of supposed patent infringements with all other tech companies, but never prosecute. This is a direct consequence of daft American patent laws in need of reform, discussed on every tech forum over the years. Get thee to Wikipedia.

Every reader will love this howler:

"Everything that unified GNOME 2, KDE, Xfce and pretty much every other desktop GUI in the world originally comes from Windows 95."

Er, no.

Meanwhile

Tape continues to back up world. World continues to spin. Reasons being tape is cheap, humoungous, fast, removable, long lived, reliable, planet friendly, tough etc. Must be very annoying for Pure.

Nice

Nice project. NB those addressing Eadon's posts. DON'T. Trolls want to turn every thread into a discussion about them, have generally nothing to say, no insights, and contribute nothing. Referring to his/her comment merely enables that.

Muzak

Play it in the elavators at El Reg, bound to increase productivity.

Politics

The govt maintains a complicated tax statute partly to enable tax avoidance, and it continues to add more layers of complexity every year. A tax avoidance industry is sustained, in which the sellers are the fig four accountancy groups, the buyers are large companies, and HMRC provide the necessary framework. The British govt also kindly provides protectorates, eg the Caymans, where tax laws do not apply.

The govt could stamp out all tax avoidance tomorrow if it wished, but this would be seen as too demotivating for executives. The govt can only work by maintaining large corporations as friends. To that end, the Chancellor will make anti-avoidance speeches in order to work up anti-avoidance feeling with the public. When public feeling is strong enough for long enough, the government can act against the corps, but keep them as friends by pointing to public opinion.

Flying car

The trouble is that flying and driving are just too different. Any car capable of flying is likely to both an awful car and a terrible aircraft.

Perhaps the best "flying car" would be a light aircraft somehow capable of carrying a small car. ie. Thunderbird 2

Great stuff.

Hey Vodaphone

Hey Vodaphone how much tax you paying out of that £2,000,000 ? Is it going through that empty office you rent in Belguim ?

IT is a big world. Although it doesn't say so, the article seems to be about software test & development only. Still good though.

Salaries have been depressed, and how. 20 years of offshoring followed by 5 years of credit crunch saw to that. Blighty has been particularly slow to recover, maybe that accounts for the better salaries on offer abroad.

Coloured keys++

Big up coloured keys, eg on the Enteprise Elan and CPC464. Gotta love that red escape key.

Sounds nice lets have some tyranny

Language engineering, censorship, tyranny, will come in ways you don't expect. Through a back door, or dressed as something nice. Like a press law. Or an anti-genocide database. Crime will turn into "hate crime" which will then become "political crime". At first you will get by just watching what you write. Then what you say. Then what you think.

Student Grant

In the 80s, student grants were scrapped by the Tories. This was done partly to stop people opting for frivolous degrees while enjoying a (then fully funded) student "lifestyle" (cf Viz). In the 90s. New Labour brought in student loans, again to encourage "serious" degrees and save cash. By "serious", I mean marketable skills.

After that, Old Labour funnelled everybody in to uni, believing this was the way to social mobility. They did it by gradually ramping down exam standards, to give everyone A levels, while the Unis responded by offering a much wider range of courses, of which many did not imbue any skills of value to the job market.

The net result is loads of grads unemployed or working at McDonalds while trying to service their student debt. And more social immobility than ever. Unfortunately for the UK, other countries took a different route.