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The software industry: So efficient, we invented shelfware

Have you considered helping customers to stop overspending?
9
Alan Pelz-Sharpe, 22 Apr 12:06

Are you being robbed of sleep by badly designed servers?

Sysadmin Blog Mornings, nights, they all blur into one for our man Trevor
58
Trevor Pott, 22 Apr 06:31

British bookworms deem Amazon 'evil'

Something for the Weekend, Sir? Chuck away your e-reader - everyone else is
127
Alistair Dabbs, 19 Apr 11:00

Bitcoins: A GIANT BUBBLE? Maybe, but currency could still be worthwhile

Lessons from tulip-hoarding Dutch speculators of 1634
96
Tim Worstall, 15 Apr 13:04

CIOs: Are you your CEO's business partner or their GIMP?

CIO Blog A Machiavellian guide for the modern CIO
24
Warren Burns, 14 Apr 21:02

I salute Lady THATCHER - Shoreditch's SILICON GODMOTHER

¡Bong! Investor Steve directs the baroness's funeral
32
Steve Bong, 12 Apr 11:44

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.

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

management governance3
Stob Does your source code editor pass the Verity test?
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 …
11 Mar 09:02

Who ate all the Pis?

Stob Verity Xmas wish comes true
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 …
29 Jan 11:44

8086 and All That. Revisited

babbage's analytical engine by gastev licensed under creative commons
Stob Back when England was Top Nation in computing: reassembled from ancient parchments
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 …
22 Dec 11:01

The Sons of Kahn and the assembly language of the internet

Stob C# hath become a lonely path. And the Beast hath shut its gates against us
Editor's Note: Verity Stob's Chronicles of Delphi [King James ed.] began in 1996. The most recent translations can be found here: The Sons of Kahn and the Pascal spring and here: Sons of Kahn: The Apocrypha. Zany adventures with Zarco and Marco And the users of Delphi had become old with the passage of years, and had taken to …
11 Dec 10:00

Stob on Quatermass: Was this British TV's finest sci-fi hour?

Stob Special Let's shake the dead fly out of the DVD
In the pub, with my editor. "Those sci-fi classics of the fifties," he mused. "Not the Hammer remakes - the originals. Are they really classics? How do they compare with modern Doctor Who? Are they even watchable?" [Dissolve to Stob's flat. A portable computing machine is displaying the Amazon website's DVD section. Pan to a TV …
08 Nov 11:00

Five go wild with the Administration Tools Pack

Stob Nobody owns the Linuxes, Julian
As you have surely heard, it’s Alan Turing’s centenary this year, and the Bletchley Park museum is celebrating by releasing a game of Monopoly themed on the life of that mathematical genius. I’ll pause for a sentence or two here, while you let your boggle levels equalise, because, given Turing’s life story, this is a quite a …
23 Oct 10:00

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