It’s nice to see an article about Apple that’s not about the iPod! This time a reasonably sized Japanese company has switched most of it’s 2300 PCs over to Mac’s.
It’s a sensible move if you ask me! Given the ease of use, lack of virus and availability of MS Office I’ve never quite understood why Mac’s are not in wider use. I guess we need more conversions like this to reassure people that it’s not a foolish move.
In the West we take having clean, running water so much for granted that when we can’t drench our gardens in the stuff we complain like the world is about to end. And this is in the London area where most people don’t even have gardens!
Maybe it takes something like World Water Day to make us realise how lucky we are.
This is a big subject and one where I’m increasingly of the opinion that we’re going too far in the wrong direction. ID Cards and imprisonment without trial are bad enough but things seem to be going even worse on the other side of the Atlantic (or the UK Government is better at hiding their nefarious plans).
Last weekend I came across an article in the Washington Post that says that the Bush administration is trying to pass a law which would restrict the rights of the press. It would, for example, make it possible to prosecute reporters who found that the President did something illegal or to publish information about a wiretap.
This has been doing the rounds, but I still think it’s amusing.
Norwegians plumb in beer-dispensing kitchen sink | The Register
Having said that, if a strange brown liquid came out of my taps I’m not sure that my first instinct would be to drink it. Mind, Norwegian beer prices — about ?5 a pint last time I was there — probably skew your thinking somewhat!
I was sad to see the passing of Linda Smith. I never saw any of her stand up work but I heard her frequently on Just a Minute and The News Quiz, where she was always sharp and funny.
Jeremy Hardy called her “the wittiest and brightest person working on TV or radio panel games” which really isn’t very far from the mark.
Guardian Unlimited | Obituaries | Linda Smith (Jeremy Hardy)
I came across this article in the dead-tree edition of Computer Weekly: it discusses how to avoid open source licensing pitfalls. It’s an interesting but flawed piece.
What did he get right? I think it’s fair to say that people should assess the risks of installing free software. Free software is still new to a lot of people making the details of these risk somewhat unknown. He’s right to say that many people do not understand what obligations using some of the various free software licences put them under. I work for a very technically-focused company yet even we have had some internal problems with this.
Even when I disagree with him, I tend to like Paul Graham’s writing. I like this essay, “How to Do What You Love.” Spending forty or more hours a week at work it’s important to like what you do.
This paragraph rang especially true: “If your work is not your favourite thing to do, you’ll have terrible problems with procrastination. You’ll have to force yourself to work, and when you resort to that the results are distinctly inferior.” I’m procrastinating a lot these days…
I’m starting to sound like a grumpy old man. (Those that know me should stop nodding their heads and agreeing now, please.) This is another “things were better in my day” post.
As I previously mentioned, both graduates and companies are complaining that university courses are not vocational enough. I personally dispute that. However I am generally in agreement with Joel Spolsky when he says that “Java is not, generally, a hard enough programming language that it can be used to discriminate between great programmers and mediocre programmers.”
Apparently web users judge sites in the blink of an eye — potential readers can make snap decisions in just 50 milliseconds. I hope you took just a little longer checking out my websites!
We normally see employers complaining that recent graduates don’t have “relevant” skills. This article is an interesting twist on that, with the job-seekers themselves complaining about their courses.
The Register: IT grads damn university courses
I think both employers and job seekers are missing the point. There’s a difference between “education” and “training.” University degrees should not simply be vocational training, they should teach principles that can be applied throughout a career and not just specific technologies that might well have a shelf-life of only a few years.