I thought that was the point...

Not that I dislike the use of the ribbon in the Office productivity tools, but considering MS is bringing it into Windows 8, I wonder if they'll introduce it into Skype? Although one has to wonder, would the functionality / UI warrant the inclusion of it? Somehow, I don't think so.

has tripled the expected cost of providing the infrastructure to the SKA site.

As a South African, I really hope that we're able to have the SKA Telescope here. The problem is, that the bandwidth issue is still a major issue, and providing the infrastructure to it in a remote area seems like a bit of a problem, especially considering that in the last report I read on it, that Telkom (the monopoly that keeps us constrained from really getting any decent level of Internet technologies at a reasonable price).

Of course, this is where a third party should step up to provide the infrastructure (since there's going to be a lot of GB's of data coming from there on a daily basis) and will obviously provide some much wanted media attention to said company... And of course yet again show how much Telkom is really ripping off the people that helped create the company that it is (since part of the infrastructure was paid for by our taxes, way back when - and since its a multi-billion Rand profit operation, I'm sure they could really afford to lower the prices to something reasonable instead of just simply ripping us off).

I guess it would also help if we stopped investing in building our own, failing satellites (and paying large sums of money to get them into space, again thanks largely to the tax payer) and invested in things that really matter (housing, electricity [which keeps going up and up, even though its Eskom's fault / government for failing to predict the usage requirements and not meeting adequate demand], water, and job creation) instead of wasting money on things that aren't really that important to us in the end.

But the SKA will at least be an impressive scientific feat that helps the global community (rather than just our nation), so I'm all for it!

Have you even used IBM Products? Quality? I'm busy working with IBM's WebSphere, and well, lets see:

- Random JNDI session bean lookup error (solution: restart computer)
- Random OutOfMemory Exception (same day, suddenly started after restart from random JNDI lookup error. Solution: restart computer)
- Random WebSphere doesn't respond at all, and the console purely says . (Solution: restart computer)
- fourth time restarting of computer: no problems at all, JNDI errors are gone, exceptions are gone, program runs. Solution was: restart computer (four times, one day, many hours wasted in productivity).

Basically, without changing anything (but just restarting the computer), you manage to fix WebSphere. And have you even tried to read some of the exceptions that it throws? "An exception was thrown, read next exception for details" - to which there is no next exception... Or an exception that reads: other exception. No real stack trace, no real information in the log file, nothing. Managing security? Well you're better of manually editing the security.xml file than trying to use the admin console - because the admin console allows you to pretty much break the entire platform (resulting in you having to reconfigure the security.xml manually).

Really, not a great product.

And don't even get me started at Rational Software Architect (or Rational Application Developer). It has so many NullPointerExceptions, and so many integration issues with WebSphere that I really can't fathom my any enterprise would want to install the products in their business. I wonder if IBM has heard of differential updates? I mean, when migrating from one version to another of an IDE, surely you just need to update just the things that have changed, rather than having to download another 7GB file of updates? Surely there can't be that many changes to the IDE in a single update? Its just a waste - they could do it so much better (is the point I'm trying to make).

DB2? You *HAVE* to give it a Windows account with Admin rights on your computer? WTF. ClearCase / ClearQuest - you have very similar requirements, and the setup takes forever. We even had IBM come in and try and configure it for us - long story - end of the day, it's still not working (after numerous 'visits', we still can't access ClearCase / ClearQuest).

So no, I really disagree with your statement of "quality products people respect", because honestly, they're frikking useless...

Surely there are bigger and better things that Google could be diverting their resources to?

Okay, so the 'engineers turned rogue' part might work out fairly well, but seriously, aliens?

In other news, how do I apply for a job here. I'm pretty sure I can come up with all kinds of silly scenario's - and get paid for it.

Having worked with ASP.NET and Java + Wicket (WebSphere, you bastard), I still prefer working with PHP - there's just something about "doing it yourself" that feels just right.

Trying to simple things in ASP.NET and Java seems so awkward. Trying to create a self-processing page in these languages requires so much extra effort, for something that should be so simple...

But that's just my observation while trying them out. I'd take programming in PHP over any other language any day - but perhaps its just because I'm that much more familiar with it (and prefer the more low-level that it seems to be compared to having to instantiate tons of different classes just to do something simple like set a session or cookie)...

I'm getting to the point where I no longer like Google, nor it's products. Verify this, Google+ that, really now.

Custom hosting is on the cheap (for email), you can use something like DuckDuckGo for searches (not quite as good as some of the others I guess, but still not that bad), and Diaspora (if it ever really gets out) for your social networking goodness (goes with the custom hosting)...

Ultimately, the largest schlep is the migration from everything-gmail-oriented to everything @domain.name oriented (forums etc).

By golly, completely off topic [reply], but thanks for an interesting read. Made me almost spray my G&T all over my computer screen re: template in the language of life.

*sigh* I should try get out more often...

I don't even live in a remote location, but a bustling city (Johannesburg). The problem is, our Internet is just so damn expensive, and most of us have to "cheap out" on the cheapest line rental for the slowest line speed (384kbps) in order to get our dose of the Internet at home. All this for the low low price (converted) of R369 [around $56?] with a 1GB international cap.

So now, to play the single player game, where my connection is already so damn slow, am I going to be booted out of the game every couple of minutes because I can't connect to the servers properly, because latency is an issue, or I have someone else connected to my router at home, trying to browse to a page (and trust me, these big sites take forever to load).

Yeah, on a good day I can consume around 2GB of data - but its all another expense (uncapped at another R200, again for the slowest line speed of 384kbps). So in the end, we already pay ~R568 for a sh*tty 384kbps line.

Definitely something I won't be investing money into (and by that, I don't mean I will pirate it, because I actually do buy games I enjoy).

In other news, I think From Dust is going to have stupid "always online" to play (according to www.impulsedriven.com - and surprisingly enough, not www.steampowered.com), and I just bought that (preorder), so perhaps I'll have a benchmark for this "always online" DRM these publishers are forcing, fist first, down our throats.

I don't think any of their games have been DRM-intensive? At least, I don't remember Morrowind having anything... Nor Oblivion. I just don't think it's something they do?

Yeah, aren't they including more of the research being done on their research labs' Singularity project? Writing a full OS in [mostly] managed code?

Not sure when these kinds of projects will ever really see the light of day, but to say .NET is dead / dying is probably a bit near-sighted...

You have an account name? I'm not on G+, but I would have thought that it's so deeply intertwined with your Google profile, that it would simply just use what-ever-it-already-was.

Then again, I'm no Google fan boy, and am deeply distressed that even though I want no part of Google+, their crappy +1 pages are now everywhere, so I have to constantly browse the Internet using InPrivate / Incognitio (depending on the browser that happens to be open) just to try and forego it showing up with my Google account showing up for the +1 integration.

So, what's changed then?

I got an invite into Google+, was on for a very short time (around 10 minutes I would guess), in which I already had several people "pre-add" me to their lists - for a brand new account (so how exactly have these relationships been formed, or is this some Buzz "feature" where certain people are automatically just linked to my Google+ account?)

I searched around for the privacy settings and was able to (A) first find a location that would remove ALL my Google accounts (but I still use Gmail, so that's not an option), and (B) something that would remove all public account information (and hopefully close the Google+ account). Which it appears to have done.

Didn't really see the need for the service, and my Google Accounts (https://www.google.com/accounts/ManageAccount) seems to indicate that: "You don't yet have a public profile. Learn more
Create a profile or edit your personal info without creating a public profile."

So what does this really mean for me? They're going to be deleting what, exactly?