Date   : Thu, 04 Nov 2010 02:32:54 +0100
From   : rick@... (Rick Murray)
Subject: No wonder CompSci graduates are unemployed

On 04/11/2010 01:13, Ian Tonks wrote:

> Ouch, apologies all for my use of a, frankly, sh-one-t mail client.

So, better or worse than Outlook? ;-)


> I'm seeing many jobs go to India, and it's not helping anyone except the
> bean counters who can't see past their little tiny bit of the bottom line.

I think you'll find that is an attribute of bean counters, anywhere... 
everywhere...


> Anyone else planning on using the free Android app from Yahoo, clearly
> don't. Although I would say it's worth every penny I paid for it.

Might be a silly question, but is there not an Android app for doing this?


I don't know about Yahoo's app, but I find it hard to be critical about 
Android/Chrome despite every bone in my body wanting to slag it for a 
dozen different privacy/implementation issues...

But... Look, Chrome was announced to the world as an ambitious project 
to write a new browser to tackle some of the problems of the lethargic 
behemoths. Now I'm (almost) in love with Firefox, but I accept it *has* 
problems. We were all like "yeah yeah, whatever Google".
Well, two and a bit years have passed which is a blink of an eye in MSIE 
dev cycle terms. And Chrome is a real browser, it really works. It's a 
shame there are so many crap points regarding the mechanics of it, 
because on the testing I did (before deleting it), it actually seemed to 
work quite well. It looks like it will soon target mobile devices which 
could be a welcome change from OperaMini/Mobile.

But Google were sitting on that. They've also p**sed over the "let's all 
go yay for Linux crowd" and devised a completely new operating system 
that, unlike hacky Linux derivatives, was actually written with embedded 
and mobile devices in mind. Like, my PVR. Works pretty good but, perhaps 
thanks to Qt4, is a bit slow on the user interface. Dig around, it's an 
ARM build of Debian. A very hacked to fit into 14Mb Flash build, but one 
nonetheless. Excuse me, isn't Debian a server class operating system 
with its granddaddy origins back in the late '70s? Does my PVR *really* 
need to run that? My dream is to port a rudimentary version of RISC OS 
to the thing (TMS320DM320 chip, a sort of pre-OMAP so some of the 
Beagleboard code might show me the way to go) and try to get the 
proprietary blah.so files running under that because I bet it'd be 
faster. Anyway, enough of that. In the world of Symbian, Maemo, and 
such, Google threw out another option. And it is pretty good. It has 
loads of flaws and quirks-a-plenty, but remember we're looking at a 
system designed and written from the ground up that just didn't exist a 
couple of years ago. If the Google devs don't "get bored and move on" 
(as so often happens), think what Android and Chrome could become in 
another couple of years? After all, Android is the new hot s**t for 
mobile devices (move over Symbian, you guys couldn't manage a 
you-know-what in a brewery), while Chrome and Opera fanbois battle it 
out to see who has the cooler browser (sorry, Firefox wins on account of 
its range of plugins) and in LESS time than elapsed between MSIE7 and 
MSIE8, it was born and it stomped right past MSIE. Well, that wouldn't 
be difficult, to be honest.


> Post in haste, repent at leisure...

Been there, done that. Apologised plenty later... ;-)


Best wishes,

Rick.

-- 
Rick Murray, eeePC901 & ADSL WiFI'd into it, all ETLAs!
BBC B: DNFS, 2 x 5.25" floppies, EPROM prog, Acorn TTX
E01S FileStore, A3000/A5000/RiscPC/various PCs/blahblah...