APPropriate Behaviour
The book about all the things software writers do that aren't writing software.
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Category Archives: rant
Bizarrely, the Guinness book of world records lists the “first microcomputer” as 1980’s Xenix. This doesn’t seem right to me: Xenix is an operating system, not a microcomputer. Xenix was announced in 1980 but not shipped until 1981. The first … Continue reading
On multitasking
TidBITS unwittingly hits the nail on the head while talking about iPad OS multitasking (emphasis added): It’s easy to imagine wanting to use an iPad to read text in Mobile Safari, copy some text to a Pages document, and send … Continue reading
Posted in iPad, iPhone, rant, usability
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Tautology of the year (so far)
From iDefense, via DarkReading: A recent wave of fatwas issued by radical Islamic religious leaders in that region authorizing these groups to use cyberattacks to defend Islam has opened the door for these groups to wage cyberattacks, according to iDefense. … Continue reading
Posted in rant, security
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It was asked for: the “features” post
Someone anonymous once said:I’m intrigued by your feature comment. Please publish said blog post!Where said comment was:The fact that I have stopped using the word ‘feature’ in many contexts is an entire blog post and a few therapy sessions in … Continue reading
Rhetoric, smoothly outlined
Something I did a number of years ago (I could tell you how many, couldn’t I? If I could remember; I think it must have been 7) was to study critical analysis. That’s the application of linguistics and sociology to, … Continue reading
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Managers: Don’t bend it that far, you’ll break it!
Go on then, what’s wrong with the words we already have? I think they’re perfectly cromulent, it’s very hard to get into a situation where the existing English vocabulary is insufficient to articulate one’s thoughts. I expect that linguists and … Continue reading
Posted in Business, mythicalmanmonth, rant
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My discs have been Americanised!
< p>For some reason, even though l10n and i18n have been fashionable terms in computing for the last few years, no-one seems able to localise properly into the lingua franca of computing, English. It may surprise some readers to learn … Continue reading
Posted in rant
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