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I, for one, welcome our robotic communist jobless future

Comment Everything will be so cheap, you won't NEED a job
Tim Worstall, 19 Sep 05:00

How do you choose your vendors?

Sysadmin blog Trevor Pott has a little list. What has he missed?
Trevor Pott, 17 Sep 08:29

Massively leaked iFail 5S POUNDS pundits, EXCITES chavs

Something for the Weekend, Sir? Frantic ‘experts’ backtrack as new iPhone unexpectedly sucks
Alistair Dabbs, 13 Sep 09:43

Everybody Loves Rayman: Legends dethrones Mario

Game Theory Plus: Diablo III’s console conversion, and Lost Planet 3 goes icy, slicey
8
Mike Plant, 12 Sep 08:02

Smartwatch craze is all just ONE OFF THE WRIST

Something for the Weekend, Sir? Digital watches were crap in the 70s so don’t expect any better now
Alistair Dabbs, 06 Sep 10:39

Columnist Roll

Verity Stob

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Verity Stob is the pseudonym of a software developer based in London. Since 1988, she has written her "Verity Stob" column for .EXE magazine, Dr. Dobb's Journal and, now, The Register.

Verity's summer songs for programmers: Sing your pals to sleep()

"What better way to dispel the rainy gloom of an English summer," mused Ms Stob, in an introduction presumably written some time in March, "than a mass office sing-along to a selection of IT-themed pastiches?" Pretty well anything, we'd have thought. Nevertheless, here is the raw material. Portable Development (Tune: Willow, …
Verity Stob, 22 Jul 2013

Bjarne Again: Hallelujah for C++

Now it has been scientifically demonstrated that we Delphi users are the happiest of all programmers, proper significance can at last be attached to the rare woes that occasionally break through our Stepford Coder personas. My test case: Warren Postma, a Delphi-head, was recently forced out of his comfort zone to repair a C++ …
Verity Stob, 17 Jun 2013
International Space Station

In space, no one can hear your laptop Blue Screen

Reg columnist Verity Stob says she's uncovered the following string of eye-opening electronic missives between the International Space Station's crew members. First, some context: "A NASA contractor deeply involved in Space Shuttle and International Space Station (ISS) operations, decided to migrate to Linux. Chuvala oversees …
Verity Stob, 07 May 2013
management governance3

Six things a text editor must do - or it's a one-way trip to the trash

When I heard, in a tutorial video, the multi-platform programmer's editor Sublime described as "the cool kids' code editor" (or possibly "the Cool Kid's code editor" - the speaker didn't enunciate his capitals and apostrophes very clearly) I was puzzled. As the goto (or, rather, the call-by-reference) consultant on Agile Harlem …
Verity Stob, 11 Mar 2013

Who ate all the Pis?

10/11/2012 I want a Raspberry Pi. I must have a Raspberry Pi. My home PC is drab. My Mac Mini is dusty. My iPad, which in my case I have not got, is a fatuous slab of plastic. Let me see the glimmer of the surface-mounted LED, and smell the green, green circuit board of 'Made in China'. But a Raspberry Pi is an example of that …
Verity Stob, 29 Jan 2013
babbage's analytical engine by gastev licensed under creative commons

8086 and All That. Revisited

Editor's Note: Verity Stob's celebrated history of computing was first published in EXE magazine in 1997, but has been unobtainable on the internets for several years. Now, thanks to the painstaking reconstruction of small pieces of parchment, and a small monetary inducement, we can now bring it to you as a Seasonal Treat. With …
Verity Stob, 22 Dec 2012