I’m always ready to moan about PC - whether that’s Personal Computer or Political Correctness.

However before we had PC we had to deal our own cards at solitaire and had adverts (and attitudes) like this

http://www.icanhasinternets.com/2010/05/25-horribly-sexist-vintage-ads/

I’m a bit late in slagging Investors Business Daily (and all Americans by implication) in their announcement that Stephen Hawking would be dead if he were British. A great story for national stereotyping (racism?) in that it uses American stereotypes of Brits (accusing us of having a naff health system) whilst conforming to British stereotypes of Americans (being ill informed and assuming anything good must be American). I’m sure the father from Goodness Gracious Me is even now saying “Stephen Hawking? He’s Indian!”.

However, with the power of the web over paper and ink the article has been miraculously changed. IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor’s Business Daily — How House Bill Runs Over Grandma

A fine example of why software should be released via the web rather than committing to hundreds of CD’s before realising there is a minor glitch.

Maybe all that being able to hand your course work in then get it back and fix it is good training for the real world after all.

Pleas come back and read this entry again next week - I may have changed it to make it more interesting by then…

I’ve just had to moan at the Beeb (again). They have been reporting in the social housing report saying that claims of “queue jumping” are proved wrong by evidence that “equal numbers” are in social housing. Der, queue jumping is about the time spent waiting not the final results.

Does it matter? If equal numbers of ethnic groups are housed (by which I assume they mean proportional to the population or to the applicants or … it could get quite complicated!), anyway if some sort of equality is in place isn’t everyone (except the BNP) happy?

I doubt it. If you have been waiting for years for housing you are not going to happy! If authorities deny problems then extremists pick up supporters and if someone can provide a scape goat to aim your anger at then it takes strong person not wallow in a blame fest.

So yes it does matter because by potentially miss-reporting angry people will feel unrepresented and be driven into the arms of the BNP etc.

Has this got anything to do with IT? Only that accuracy is important - maybe that is a lesson I learned coding. Many of us create / review reports, read / generate statistics, make / influence management decisions and doing it right and being seen to do right can make a huge difference to work force moral.

I am starting a campaign to find a new term for someone who wants things to be right - perfectionist, pedant are negative terms. Is there already a word for someone who expects the details to be right when they matter but doesn’t get fussy when they don’t? I can’t think of one so I’m inventing “accuratist” - I expect it’s copyright to a watch company!

Did I mention we’d been bought out by another company some time ago? I think I may have ranted over the issue a few times

Anyway, we used to sell two products that shared some same code and did much the same. One was named after X (because it runs on Linux using X Windows) the other after windows because it runs on Windows.

The marketing guys at the new company decided they ought to have a streamlined name like “blah for windows” and

Answers to http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/davef/2008/10/17/never-a-crossword-part-ii/

Not too hard I hope - not with the explantions anyway!

On

The current add on the IT Pro home page gives me an excuse to plug one of my hobbies - cryptic crosswords. I’ve been doing them for years but some time ago I thought “that’s a rubbish clue, I could do better than that” and after a while I gave it a go.