"...computing power that "is 10 billion times faster than the one we [Amstrad] made 23 years ago"."

So if we divide the Library of Congress by Station Wagons hurling down the highway filled with tape drives, factor in Moore's Law and, let's see, carry the one... that pretty much accounts for my porn collection...

Less flippantly recently El Reg ran an article wherein an American scientist/engineer spoke of how modeling had come to take a place in science equal to theory and method. The noted increase of 10 billion times in computing speed is mind boggling in terms of the likely speed at which science is advancing.

Wasn't it Surallan that said the other week to a contestant on his game show that "This isn't about your scientific protons and neutrons, this is the real world love" to that quantum physicist.

If I remember correctly, she couldn't sell sweets to kids on a day out to the zoo, so may be she would be better with computers. But Alan's respect for science has already been revealed.

But we seem to agree on the direction computing should be headed. Ideally in the direction of the nation being able to get completely plastered while a computer does my job - just so long as they all have that chip implanted that makes them believe in robot heaven....

This might have been a rather thinly veiled attack on the slightly different account of events recorded by the Sun journo :-)

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2001320029-2007200588,00.html

Great reporting in that Sun article:

"The cluster has an unbelievable 182 terabytes of storage, which means it can process in one SECOND what would have taken the first Amstrad computer 317 YEARS.

"It also means it has the storage capacity of FIVE MILES worth of MP3 players laid end to end."

Hmmmmmmm

... just goes to show he's right, when the sun journo and editor allow typos to get through to the final print version. (I know the El Reg do it as well, but I like them I and I don't like the sun).

Most media students are useless and are doing the course as an easy cope out, plus they all think they will get loads of money and fame from it when they enter the market (it is a massive generalisation, but more or less true, I used to teach media related courses). The truth being that there isn't much money in media and the average media industry worker isn't that much better off than say their counterpart in IT.